i 

'4398* 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

ShelfjiX.€>33^ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



VOX SPEI 



VOX SPEI 



WILLIAM ANDREW PERRINS 

Author of " Pencil Pictures," " Problems of To-day,' 1 
"Useful Studies," etc 



" Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
And hope without an object cannot live." 

— Coleridge 




PUBLISHED IN BEHALF OF THE 
BUILDING FUND OF THE BAP- 
TIST CHURCH, BEDFORD, OHIO 






• 



Copyright, i8q8 
William Andrew Perrins 



18938 



B^OCOPltSBtCtlVED* 



C' > a fX ' 





Cop£* 






DEDICATED TO 

THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH 
BEDFORD, OHIO 

IN TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FOR MANY KIND DEEDS 
TO THEIR PASTOR: ALSO TO 

MY WIFE 

WHO HAS BEEN THE SOURCE OF MUCH JOY 
TO MY LIFE 



Contents 

Page 
Preface 9 

Christ and Politics 13 

Christ and Theological Thought . 31 
Christ and the Church .... 49 
Christ and the World's Thought . 67 
"The Imitation of Christ" ... 83 
"Pilgrim's Progress" . . . . 99 
"The Analogy of Religion" . . 119 
"The Christian Year" . • . .137 



Preface 

These addresses are published at the 
urgent and unanimous solicitation of 
the members of the First Baptist 
Church, Bedford, Ohio. Through the 
sale of this publication, they hope to 
clear the indebtedness on the new 
church-building. The general aim of 
these addresses is to state, as briefly as 
possible, the main features of the sub- 
jects under discussion, with the desire 
to strengthen our hope in ' ' the event- 
ual victory of the good and the great. ' ' 
The author, therefore, sends this vol- 
ume forth on its twofold mission, 
with the hope that the debt will be 
cleared, and that the outlook of every 
reader will be made brighter than 

ever before. 

W. A. P. 

First Baptist Church, 

Bedford, Ohio, 

October, 1898. 



"But the wise know that foolish legislation 
is a rope of sand, which perishes with the twist- 
ing; that the State must follow, and not lead, 
the character and progress of the citizen." — 
Emerson. 

" Man is by nature a political being. ' ' — Aris- 
totle. 

" To man the Creator has assigned the social 
and the political state as best adapted to develop 
the great capacities and faculties, intellectual 
and moral, with which He has endowed him." 
— Calhoun. 

" The freedom of the people, or political 
freedom, presumes also that the political order 
shall conform to the will of the political peo- 
ple." — Mulford. 

"Where political life is all-pervading, can 
practical politics be on a lower level than public 
opinion? How can a free people which toler- 
ates gross evils be a pure people? " — Bryce. 



Christ and Politics 

Zeck. 4 : 10 (part) 

The Bible is preeminently a religious 
book, a book that has to do with the 
Christian and higher character of the 
world. It is, nevertheless, a book that 
is intimately associated with, and has a 
tremendous hold upon, the domestic, 
commercial, and political life of hu- 
manity. The text is a bold illustra- 
tion of this truth. The Hebrew people 
had wilfully and woefully declined 
from the observance of heavenly and 
righteous laws ; they had partly disas- 
sociated themselves from the conscious 
rule and government of God. Now 
God, through the agency of Zerub- 
babel, God's politician to this people, 
makes His intentions clear, while in 
every age and among every people God 
has a representative in the political 
action of the day, a man who is unself- 



14 VOX SPEI 

ish in his ambitions and enthusiastic- 
ally consecrated to the higher political 
purposes of the people; such men as 
Bismarck in Germany, and Gladstone 
in England, and Lincoln in the United 
States. 

The incident in which Zerubbabel 
figures so prominently is simple in the 
extreme. Zerubbabel holds a plum- 
met in his hand ; and the part played 
by the plummet in the erection of a 
building is analogous to the govern- 
ment of the political life of the nation 
and the world by the divine law, so 
wonderfully set forth in the Bible. 
The plummet used in the erection of a 
building is of stone and tin, and its fre- 
quent application to the building will 
disclose the accuracy or inaccuracy of 
the wall. The plummet used by Ze- 
rubbabel was the law and thought of 
the Almighty applied to the politi- 
cal thought and action of the people. 
Thus, then, we arrive at a conclusion 
which is usually neglected, sometimes 



VOX SPEI ic 

ignored; namely, that all life, whether 
domestic, or intellectual, or commer- 
cial, or political, has its origin in the 
great wisdom and unfailing beneficence 
of our Father and our God ! Domestic 
life which is the scene of perpetual 
discord, is domestic life without the 
presence of God and the controlling 
influences of the Christian religion; 
intellectual life without the " wisdom 
that is from above," is intellectual 
life devoid of the noblest and the 
sweetest expressions to the mind of 
mankind ; commercial life which is the 
scene of dishonesty, the center of a 
wilful rascality, is commercial life as 
openly infidel and as treacherously 
criminal as France in the eighteenth 
century and as Turkey of to-day ; and 
political life which does not acknowl- 
edge the presence of the Almighty and 
the supremacy of the Law of God, 
political life that is fostered on personal 
gain and personal ambition, — such 
politics are an injustice and a cruelty, 



16 VOX SPEI 

and such politicians are condemned 
before God and are held in contempt 
by the people everywhere. Emer- 
son, in the introduction to his essay on 
Politics, with marvelous insight and 
noble conception, puts this same 
thought in the following way: — 

" Gold and iron are good 

To buy iron and gold; 
All earth's fleece and food 

For their like are sold. 
Hinted Merlin wise, 

Proved Napoleon great, — 
Nor kind nor coinage buys 

Aught above its rate. 
Fear, Craft, and Avarice 

Cannot rear a State. 
Out of dust to build 

What is more than dust, — 
Walls Amphion piled 

Phoebus stablish must. 
When the muses nine 

With the Virtues meet 
Find to their design 

An Atlantic seat, 
By green orchard boughs 

Fended from the heat. 



VOX SPEI 17 

Where the statesman ploughs 

Furrow for the wheat; 
When the Church is social worth 
When the State-house is the hearth, 
Then the perfect State is come, 
The republican at home.' , 

Now, I have a few plain statements 
to make. The first is : Our nation is 
preeminently a gift, and the gift is ac- 
companied by limitations from the 
Giver. Those of you who are familiar 
with the early antecedent history of 
this country and the first and early 
struggles of our forefathers will read- 
ily see this truth. The political and 
religious disruptions of the old world 
were not devoid of a significant mean- 
ing and a great purpose ; the landing 
of the Pilgrims on the shore of this 
new world was not a chance of the 
wind or a caprice of navigation; the 
forthcoming of Governor Winthrop, of 
William Penn, and a long list of cour- 
ageous Christian men and women had 
a meaning to after-generations: it 



18 VOX SPEI 

meant that God gave us this country, 
and that He had a keen interest in its 
larger growth and its more complete 
development. 

The second statement I have to make 
is this: Our statesmen, our politicians, 
who do not understand this divinity in 
our national origin and this divine rule 
in our development, have a wrong con- 
ception of their office, and their conclu- 
sions retard our growth in the right- 
eous, the right direction. This, there- 
fore, leads me to a statement which I 
have not heard made anywhere, which 
statement I announce with all the em- 
phasis of my being, and which is en- 
forced by the truth of the Christian 
Scriptures, the loud and clear voice of 
history, — this is the statement: Our 
halls of Civic and State and National Legis- 
lature ought to remind us of a temple, and 
no man ought to be a statesman or a poli- 
tician who is not a devout Christian, a 
Christian Gentleman. 

I am not a pessimist, I am not an 



VOX SPEI 19 

alarmist, I am not a fanatic, when I 
say that politics in America are cor- 
rupt, and politicians, with some few 
exceptions, are devoid of complimental 
and exalted character. They are 
bribed in every direction; they have 
no spirit of probity or self-respect or 
manly dignity. Politicians are the 
servants of the city or the State or the 
nation, and as such they are continu- 
ally bribed. Hence soldiers* half- 
tanned shoes give way, as they did 
recently, on a march; their shoddy 
coats became faded and soon fell to 
rags, while their tinned provisions were 
found to be rotten. Money finds its 
way into the treasury of the politician 
frequently; thus the man on a small 
salary becomes rich in a short time. 
An inventor once suggested a method 
of registering the number of persons 
entering the London omnibuses, but 
the president was unable to entertain 
such a method. " It is of no use to 
us," the president said; " the machine 



20 VOX SPEI 

which we want is one that will make 
our men honest; and that, I am afraid, 
we are not likely to meet with/' Yes, 
we want a machine in politics which 
will make our politicians honest, but 
such a machine we cannot find. What, 
then, will make our politicians honest? 
Nothing but the highest motive, a mo- 
tive that has its origin in the mind of 
God, a motive that is supreme because 
it is such as the Savior Himself pos- 
sessed. We want politicians who will 
refuse to be bought, and even the 
poorest must be inspired by a sense of 
duty, and refuse to sell themselves for 
money. It was among the North 
American Indians a wish for wealth 
was considered unworthy of a brave 
man, so that the chief was the poorest 
of the tribe. The best benefactors, 
the noblest politicians of the race have 
been poor men, — among the Hebrews, 
the Greeks, and among the Romans. 
Elijah was at the plow when called to 
be a statesman and a prophet, and Cin- 






VOX SPEI 21 

einnatus was in his fields when called 
to lead the armies of Rome. Socrates 
and Epaminondas were among the 
poorest men of Greece; so were the 
Galilean fishermen, the founders of our 
common Christianity. Aristides was 
called cl The Just" from his unbend- 
ing integrity. His sense of justice was 
spotless and his self-denial unimpeach- 
able. He fought at Marathon, at Sala- 
mis, and commanded the army at the 
battle of Platea; and though he filled 
the highest office the State had to offer 
yet he died a poor man. Nothing 
could buy him ; nothing could induce 
him to swerve from his duty. Would 
to God that the mantle of Elijah would 
fall upon our politicians, the purpose of 
Cincinnatus possess them, and the spirit 
of Aristides control them all to-day ! 

Notice, then, that the politician 
should have a right conception of the 
nation. The nation is not mere mate- 
rial or territorial limitations, it is not 
merely so many mountains, so many 



22 VOX SPEI 

rivers ; it is not so much land for rail- 
roads and agriculture and commerce; 
the nation is not to be regarded u asan 
artifice which man has devised, nor an 
expedient suggested by circumstances, 
to secure certain special and temporary 
ends." The nation is frequently de- 
scribed as the highest contrivance of 
human skill, and government as the 
cunning or clumsy device for the accom- 
plishment of certain personal and peri- 
odical advantages. The nation is the 
moral, the intellectual, and the spirit- 
ual life of man. " Man," says Aris- 
totle, " is by nature a political being/' 
All the elements of the nation are in his 
nature, and its progress is in the de- 
velopment of his character. Yes, the 
most exalted ingenuity could not have 
planned the American nation, and it is 
not to be counted among the achieve- 
ments of our great wisdom; yes, the 
nation is in the man, and every man is 
the wisdom, the beneficence, the prod- 
igality of God himself ! 



VOX SPEI 23 

The politician, then, is to under- 
stand this high conception of the nation 
if he is to use his privileges acceptably 
before his Maker and his fellow-man. 
Is it not true that the character of the 
nation is very frequently outlined in 
the lives of its foremost citizens ? Thus 
we see Rome in Caesar, and Greece in 
Pericles ; wipe Germany from the na- 
tional life of Europe, and you can tell 
what were Germany* s commanding 
traits as you read them in the life of 
Count Bismarck; and the urbanity, 
the intellectual preeminence, the cour- 
age and devotion of England are all 
wrapped up in the life of England's 
greatest son, William Ewart Gladstone ; 
while the national life of America has a 
truthful advocacy in the character of 
such men as Webster, Garrison, Beech- 
er, and many more. The nation, 
then, is not a mechanical contrivance, 
it is not a machine : the nation is a liv- 
ing, a pulsating, the nation is a sacred 
organism ; the nation is a life through 



24 VOX SPEI 

which God is working out His infinite 
purpose for the world; the nation is 
intellect and will and emotion and 
heart, and these are gifts from a propi- 
tious and all-powerful God; and the 
highest conception of the nation is 
divine love, the rule of society, and 
Christ among its citizens. 

Notice, still further, the politician is 
to ignore the demands of party. The 
party spirit in the politics of the United 
States is the paralysis of our national 
life. There are men to-day in the 
halls of our National Legislature who 
are devoted to party, so controlled by 
their leader that they fail to find any 
good outside their narrow limitations. 
James Bryce, in his American Common- 
wealth, devotes nearly 250 pages of his 
excellent book to the party system in 
the politics of this country. The 
great writer and statesman makes it 
clear that this is our great danger, and 
in the end will destroy our higher and 
highest national life. History fur- 



VOX SPEI 25 

nishes examples of this truth. Greece 
gathered around one or two individ- 
uals, they adopted the system of phi- 
losophy or morals which these leaders 
had to offer ; and Rome went in haste 
after the military leaders, whose tac- 
tics were questionable to the humane 
and civilized of that day. Thus it was 
that Greece died with Pericles and 
Rome passed away with Caesar, 

"Who for the universe narrowed his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for 
mankind. ' ' 

He, then, is the noblest politician 
who can discern good in whatever 
sphere, and who will stand by the 
right, whatever may be the conse- 
quences. He, then, is the cleanest 
and the most courageous politician 
who deems his duty above party, and 
whose conscience is his leader. Devo- 
tion to party system has its illustration 
in the Nihilists of Germany and Rus- 
sia, and the Communists of France; 



26 VOX SPEI 

devotion to duty, to what is right, has 
its illustration in the Huguenots, the 
Pilgrims, and the noble men who stood 
for liberty fifty years before the Civil 
War. Such a politician draws his wis- 
dom from the New Testament, and the 
Christ is the inspiration of his life. He 
is the best politician who is not a prig, 
but a prophet and a priest, a man who 
is the medium of the interpretation 
and application of the decalogue to the 
highest interests of the people. 

Notice, again, that the politician is 
to despise personal enrichment. When 
the secession from the Scotch Church 
took place, Norman Macleod said it was 
a great trial to the flesh to keep by the 
unpopular side, and to act out what 
conscience dictated was the line of 
duty. Scorn and hissing greeted him 
at every turn. ' l I saw a tomb to-day, ' ' 
he writes in one of his letters, " in the 
chapel of Holyrood, with this inscrip- 
tion: 'Here lies an honest man.' I 
only wish to live in such a way as to 



VOX SPEI 27 

entitle me to the same inscription/ ' It 
is such a spirit we want to dominate 
our politicians, and such a spirit is 
born only in close contact with the 
honest Divine Man, Jesus Christ, our 
Lord! Phocion, the great Athenian 
general, a man of great bravery and 
foresight, was surnamed " The Good/' 
Alexander the Great, when overrun- 
ning Greece, endeavored to win him 
from his loyalty. He offered him 
riches, and the choice of four cities in 
Asia. The answer of Phocion bespoke 
the spotless character of the man. " If 
Alexander really esteems me," he said, 
1 ' let him leave me my honesty. " And, 
though Phocion lived over 2,300 years 
ago, yet he lives to-day, and his honest 
political convictions are operative at 
the close of the nineteenth century. 

Macaulay, whose History of England 
is a great fascination to the American 
people, is an example of honesty and 
the success that attend a true political 
career. When earning only $1,000 a 



28 VOX SPEI 

year by his pen, Sydney Smith wrote 
of him in this way : l i I believe that 
Macaulay is incorruptible. You might 
lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, 
titles before him in vain. He has an 
honest, genuine love for his country, 
and the world could not bribe him to 
neglect her interests. ' ' Such men love 
the Christ and acknowledge His great 
supremacy; such men consult the 
Bible, and not Blackstone; such men 
look God in the face and say, " I want 
to do my duty, and I will, with the help 
from Thee." 




"Creeds are good. Theologies are good. 
But creeds however scriptural, and theologies 
however sound, are not of themselves enough. 
1 1 adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches ' is 
not a formula that will exorcise the evil spirits 
and make the men who hear obedient to the 
faith.' ' — Greer, 

" Revelation is not meant to satisfy mere curi- 
osity or the idle desire to know. It shines above 
us like the stars, but, unlike them, it shines 
to be the guide of our lives." — MacLaren, 

"He [Christ] taught the highest theology, 
but He also placed Himself at the very centre 
of His doctrine, and He announced Himself as 
sharing the very throne of that God whom He 
so clearly unveiled." — Liddon, 

" Do not ask for the solution of the difficul- 
ties by which theologians have been perplexed 
and divided \ try to know at first hand — to see 
for yourselves — the facts about which the 
Church is agreed." — Dale, 

"Young men, your business is to preach 
Christ; it is not your calling to deal with subtle 
distinctions, Christ is your theology." — Spur- 
ge on. 



Christ and Theological 
Thought 

/ Thess. j : 21 

These words introduce us to one of 
the most thoughtful writers of the 
New Testament. The manliness, the 
superiority, the activity of Paul's in- 
tellect is nowhere more manifest than 
in his epistles to the Church at Thessa- 
lonica. Paul, more than any other 
writer in the early Church, had given 
careful attention to the ' ' credentials, ' ' 
to the truth of revelation, to the au- 
thority the Church had for its existence 
among the people. In his letters the 
Apostle Paul reveals his scholarship, 
and it is these writings which give 
him a place readily among the great- 
est philosophers of the day. But no 
one to-day will dare to call the Apos- 
tle Paul a " critic," as " higher criti- 
cism" had not yet been introduced 



32 VOX SPEI 

into the thought of the Church, and 
such language had not yet found its 
way into the vocabulary of the people. 
So it is possible to give the unceasing 
attention of the greatest intellectual 
powers to the examination of the 
thought and sacred text of the Scrip- 
tures, and yet not be listed with those 
writers that bear the unfortunate titles, 
' ' Bible critics, " l ' higher critics, ' ' 
"constructive critics,' ' and " destruc- 
tive critics/ ' I say rightly " unfortu- 
nate titles," because it is not the purpose 
of a large number of this school to be 
harsh and unfavorable in their judg- 
ment. It is unfortunate that many of 
these Christian scholars should be 
termed critics, as criticism is a word 
around which the common people 
throw an undesirable and unpalatable 
meaning. The " Bible critic " is usu- 
ally thought of as carrying in his hand 
a knife with which he is supposed to 
lacerate the text of the Scriptures, and 
with which he cuts away that which is 



VOX SPEI 33 

food to the higher and nobler, the re- 
ligious nature of mankind. I think, 
therefore, that it would be wiser to 
apply different terms to these religious 
scholars ; and those who are favorable 
to the Christian Scriptures, who are 
anxious to remove the debris which, 
during these hundreds of years, has 
accumulated around the precious stone, 
the jewel that sparkles with the lustre 
of the noonday sun, — such Christian 
scholars I would term " Christian 
apologists." And such scholars as tell 
us that the account of the creation is a 
great myth, that Job is but a fancy of 
the intellect, that the Book of Jonah 
is but a piece of ancient fiction ; such 
scholars who refer to the Old Testa- 
ment as ' ' rich alike in legends and 
myths," and who say that "we take 
as examples the stories of the first 
human pair, the Fall, Cain and Abel, 
the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, God's 
appearance to Abraham, and Jacob's 
wrestling," that "these stories have 



34 VOX SPEI 

no historical foundation whatever/ ' — 
such scholars I would term " destruc- 
tive critics/ ' critics who lack the sym- 
pathy which comes from close fellow- 
ship with the Lord Jesus Christ. 

These destructive critics have their 
home in Germany, with some few fol- 
lowers in England and in the United 
States. The scholarship of Germany 
has never been noted for its deep spirit- 
uality, for its expression of devotion 
to the great religious interests of the 
Kingdom of the Lord Christ. I can- 
not detail all the destructive points 
in the so-called " scientific criticism/ ' 
the ' i historical criticism ," or the ' * mod- 
ern criticism ' of Germany. We no- 
tice that these German critics treat 
the greater, the most important, parts 
of the Old Testament as mere legends. 
They refer to the first chapter of Gene- 
sis as a "legend;" the account of 
Enoch, in the fifth chapter of Genesis, 
is spoken of as " invented by the writ- 
er himself," and " we can no longer 



VOX SPEI 35 

accept his statement as true." Such 
writers refer to the Flood, in the sixth 
chapter of Genesis, in such language 
as this : ' ' We cannot give any high 
position to the legend itself." Speak- 
ing of the historical movements of the 
Children of Israel, these German schol- 
ars use the following language : ' * The 
Exodus, the wandering, the passage 
of the Jordan, the settlement in Canaan 
are simply impossible ; the representa- 
tion of all this is absurd. The repre- 
sentation of the Mosaic times and of 
the settlement in Canaan given us is, 
as a whole, contradicted by veritable 
history; genealogies are as unhistor- 
ical and artificial as those of the chron- 
icler." " The great majority of the 
writers of the Old Testament have no 
other source of information than simple 
tradition. ' ' Such criticism is an open 
blasphemy, and at the same time be- 
trays an unsympathetic heart and a 
wilful, irreligious thought. Such crit- 
icism is to be dreaded more than a 



36 VOX SPEI 

bloody massacre. A physical massacre 
is violence only to the material, and is 
the destruction of bodies which one 
day must die; while this destructive 
criticism seeks to disturb the peace that 
has been purchased for us by the suf- 
fering of our fathers, and to torture 
and even destroy the life that has come 
to us through the death of the Lord 
Christ, the gift of the Father's love to 
the world. Such criticism is to be 
feared more than the scourge of a 
dreaded pestilence, it is to be shunned 
more than any dire disease. 

This destructive criticism shows itself 
further in its attempt to minimize the 
importance of truth as truth, in their 
crafty procedure to eliminate the seri- 
ousness, the great solemnity there is 
contained in the moral action of the 
Almighty in His relationship to the 
world. They teach the universal rela- 
tion of man to God without the great 
action of redemption by the Savior and 
regeneration on the part of the Holy 



VOX SPEI 37 

Spirit ; they tell us that Christ is only 
the highest development of humanity, 
that He is a martyr for the truth, and 
thus an example for universal imita- 
tion ; they tell us that sin is a misfor- 
tune and a disease, and must be 
treated, through the aid of the latest 
scientific development, as any other 
disease ; they tell us that salvation is 
attainable by character, and that evolu- 
tion is the agent to bring about this 
wonderful reformation. Such thought 
is a clear contradiction to the thought 
contained in the New Testament, and 
he who is an advocate of such thought 
puts himself in direct opposition to the 
thought of God Himself. Such criti- 
cism takes out of the Bible that unseen 
influence which has touched and trans- 
formed the character of the world. 
But, with all this destructive criticism, 
this malicious intent on the Scriptures, 
we can say with the eminent Christian 
scholar, Ewald, as he held the Greek 
Testament before the students in his 



38 VOX SPEI 

class-room, " This one little book has 
more in it than all the wisdom of the 
ages;" and with Johnson, the famous 
lexicographer, who, in answer to a 
young man who put to the great schol- 
ar this question, " What book shall I 
read?" said, "Young man, the Bible 
is the best book, read it" Salmasius 
was the most learned man of the seven- 
teenth century. He had not only read 
books, but whole libraries, and in his 
closing hours the bitter exclamation 
was this: " Oh, I have lost a world of 
time! Had I but one year longer, it 
should be spent in reading David's 
Psalms and Paul's Epistles/ ' There 
have been few braver spirits in the 
world than John Knox, and few great- 
er, more manly thinkers than John 
Foster. It is the biographer of the 
latter who tells us that "during the 
last two or three days of his life, the 
Scriptures were, by his own desire, ex- 
clusively read to him ; ' ' and when 
Knox was laid on his deathbed, along 



VOX SPEI 39 

with other portions, he made his attend- 
ants read to him every day the fifty- 
third chapter of Isaiah and the seven- 
teenth chapter of John. A young 
man leaves home for the scene of bat- 
tle ; his mother gives him a copy of the 
New Testament, and requests him to 
carry it with him everywhere. In a 
most bloody engagement a ball from 
the ranks of the enemy pierces his coat 
and lodges in the cover of the Testa- 
ment, and thus his life is saved. Carry 
the Bible with you, put it next to your 
heart, let its truths be as a panoply to 
you; it will cover you completely, it 
will save you from the destructive, the 
dangerous, the death-dealing action of 
the enemy; the Bible is a sword, a 
helmet, a shield, — you are a soldier, 
then go into battle for victory, as God 
is on your side ! 

We have seen, then, that these de- 
structive critics cast a deep gloom over 
every bright and precious promise of 
the Scriptures, and cast doubt into 



40 VOX SPEI 

every section that contains important 
historical and geographical informa- 
tion. And this these critics do in the 
light of the truth that Christ endorsed 
every part of the Scriptures which 
they so vigorously assail. These crit- 
ics tell us that Moses did not write the 
first five books of the Bible, while 
Christ said, M Did not Moses give you 
the Law?" And our Lord, in the 
struggles of the temptation in the wil- 
derness, quotes from one of the five 
books in this way: " It is written, Man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God." " It is written, Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
Him only shalt thou serve." "It is 
written, Thou shalt not tempt the 
Lord thy God/ ' These critics tell us 
that the wanderings of the Children of 
Israel in the wilderness is but a picture 
of the imagination, that it is a pleas- 
ing tale like many other pieces of 
legend, while our Lord refers to this 



VOX SPEI 41 

circumstance in language which cannot 
be misunderstood. In his discourse 
to the people at Capernaum, He said, 
11 Our fathers did eat manna in the 
desert; as it is written, He gave them 
bread from heaven to eat." These 
critics tell us that the Flood is " im- 
possible " and even "absurd," they 
dismiss it as unworthy of any intelli- 
gent thought ; while the Master, in His 
address to the people shortly before 
his trial and crucifixion, made use of 
these words : ' ' For as in the days that 
were before the flood they were eat- 
ing and drinking, marrying and giving 
in marriage, until the day that Noe 
entered into the ark, and knew not 
until the flood came, and took them 
away ; so shall also the coming of the 
Son of Man be." These critics tell us 
that Jonah and the monster fish is 
surely a monstrous fancy of the human 
intellect, that such a man never did 
live, and that such an event never 
could have occurred in the waters of 



42 VOX SPEI 

the Mediterranean; while the Lord 
Jesus, in His reproof to the Pharisees, 
said the following : ' ' For as Jonas was 
three days and three nights in the 
whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man 
be three days and three nights in the 
heart of the earth. The men of Nine- 
veh shall rise in judgment with this 
generation, and shall condemn it; be- 
cause they repented at the preaching 
of Jonas; and behold a greater than 
Jonas is here." Our Lord knew the 
Old Testament Scriptures ; the sections 
which the critics discuss and dispute 
are those sections to which Christ re- 
fers; those books which the critics 
would remove from the Old Testament 
are the very books with which Christ 
was familiar, as He, in His discourses, 
referred to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, 
Numbers, Deuteronomy, Samuel, 
Kings, Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, 
Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, Daniel, Jonah, Micah, Joel, 
Zechariah, and Malachi. 



VOX SPEI 43 

But these critics adopt other tactics 
to accomplish their ends. They see 
that Christ's authority and judgment 
are against them, and now they say 
" Christ had His limitations." In the 
monstrosity of such thought these crit- 
ics reduce our divine Lord to the level 
of Plato, Mohammed, Bacon, or Shake- 
speare. Thus they would remove the 
central Figure from our religion, and 
give the Christ a place among the saints 
of the past; they would remove the 
Sun of our day and permit the human 
race to grope its way through the dark, 
with the hope that one day humanity 
will find the presence and blessedness 
of God. All other religions have a 
central personage. The Greeks told 
of Soter; the Romans of Hercules, 
who killed the dragon that watched 
the apple in the Garden of Hesperides ; 
the Persians looked to Sosiosh, who was 
to settle the controversy between Or- 
muzd the Good and Ahriman the Black, 
and so bring ultimate happiness to all ; 



44 VOX SPEI 

the Hindoos looked for Vishnu, who 
was to plant his foot on the serpent's 
head; and the Egyptians looked for 
Osiris, who was to go down to hell to 
subdue the evil one. Shall not we, 
likewise, look to One who has power 
that is more than human, and a love 
that is deeper than that which is found 
to exist between the mother and her 
infant babe? Shall we not have One 
whose wisdom is not disputed, whose 
character is free from every fault; 
shall we not have One who stands mid- 
way between man and God, because 
He is the Son of Man, and He is also 
the Son of God? 

In his Epistles, John describes what 
he calls the Antichrist. It has great- 
ly bewildered and perplexed many of 
the destructive critics to discover its 
identity. John, however, declares the 
Antichrist to be any form of philos- 
ophy, any condition of thought, any 
system of teaching, which denies the 
divine personality and authority of the 



VOX SPEI 45 

only-begotten Son of God. We ob- 
serve this teaching, with its influence, 
in what is called the Htimanitarianism 
which is secretly at work in some quar- 
ters to-day. The arrogation of pro- 
found regard for Christ, the insistence 
that all true theology shall be Christo- 
centric, and the sentimental claims of 
affection toward Him, are not sufficient 
evidence of Christianity, as long as 
there is a wicked and wilful denial of 
the divineness of the Lord Christ. It 
is true that a straw shows sometimes 
the way the wind is blowing. A little 
over twenty-five years ago, the ration- 
alistic wing of the Reformed Church 
of Germany were craftily engaged in 
controverting the authenticity of the 
miracles of the Lord Christ and the in- 
errancy of the Scriptures. To-day 
the same school, led by Harnack and 
his pupils, is demanding .the elimina- 
tion from the Apostles' Creed of every- 
thing that teaches the divinity of 
Christ. Ten years ago the Andover 



4 6 



VOX SPEI 



theologians, having already disposed 
of the integrity of the Scriptures, were 
eloquently discoursing on the ' ' Larger 
Hope." To-day they send forth their 
manifesto for a " restatement of the 
doctrine of Christ.' ' Finally, it is not 
so very long ago that one of America's 
brightest, most eloquent pulpit orators 
said, " I refuse to accept these things 
upon the authority of any such person 
as God ! ' ' The Scriptures are impreg- 
nable, and upon them we will stand ; 
Christ is the Son of God, He has power 
to save, and He, yes, He shall be our 
Friend for evermore ! 




u Wherever God erects a house of prayer, 
The devil always builds a chapel there. ' ' 

— Defoe. 

"The Church has a very important func- 
tion in regard to those who are without. It has 
not only to foster and educate its own members, 
but it has to do God's work in the world." — 

Hamilton. 

" Who builds a church to God, and not to 
Fame, 
Will never mark the marble with his Name." 

— Pope. 

"There are multitudes who go in and out, 
who count the Church as theirs, who gather 
from her thought, knowledge, the comfort of 
good company, the sense of safety. 
Life would mean nothmg to them outside the 
Church of Christ."— Brooks. 



Christ and the Church 

/ Tim. 3 : 15 (part) 

This text is one of the prisms of the 
New Testament. We may look at it 
from different directions, and every 
look presents a new and beauteous col- 
or. " The Church " — the significance 
of this word is best understood when 
we remember that it suggests a con- 
trast with the magnificent Temple of 
Diana, which was built in Ephesus, 
and which had the distinction of being 
considered one of the seven wonders 
of the world. The beauty of the 
Church did not consist in material 
splendor, or in the costliness of its 
adornments, or in the grandeur of its 
architecture, or in the massiveness of 
its appearance; it was in the object of 
its existence, the thought it announced, 
the Person who dwelt forever within 
its walls. The royal palace is not 



50 VOX SPEI 

necessarily a building of finer propor- 
tions, nor encompassed with more 
beautiful surroundings, filled with 
more costly treasures — the Sutherland 
House, in England, is more attractive 
and palatial than Buckingham Palace ; 
but the distinction of the royal palace 
lies in the fact that it is the seat and 
habitation of the Queen. In the same 
manner, the beauty and attraction of 
the Church lie in the fact that it is 
the abode of the infinite, all-loving, 
all-powerful God. 

" The Church of the living God " is 
a phrase which contains an additional 
truth, as Paul delighted to contrast 
the "living God " with the dead gods 
of heathenism: these had ears, yet 
they could not hear the cry of distress 
or the voice of adoration from a hum- 
ble worshiper; they had hands, yet 
they could not send them forth on a 
mission of help to those in distress and 
difficulty. The apostle also contrasted 
the " living God M with those dead ab- 



VOX SPEI 51 

stractions of philosophy which, in that 
day, as at the close of the nineteenth 
century, would substitute a vague im- 
personal force for a Father who is in- 
terested in all His children. 

If the Church is sure to maintain its 
royal prestige and exert its tremendous 
power, it is because the ministry is 
true to its vocation, because the 
preachers are fearless in their proc- 
lamation of truth that is in opposition 
to every form of wickedness, whether 
in the domestic, the political, or the 
religious world. The Christian minis- 
try has no uncertainty to preach, no 
mere speculations to unfold, no God 
to announce who changes in character 
with the demand of every age. The 
ministry is not like the god-maker in 
Pompeii, whose custom it was to make 
all the parts of the image except the 
face; this he left till he knew what 
the purchaser would like, and then he 
would give him either Minerva, or 
Juno, or Venus, or the great Jove him- 



52 VOX SPEI 

self. God forbid that such a process 
should be carried into our pulpits and 
into our literature; for, if this takes 
place, the time will surely come to the 
United States as it did to Athens, 
when men will erect their altar ' i to 
the unknown God." May God make 
every church " the pillar and ground 
of the truth," on which it securely 
rests amid the fluctuations of human 
thought, " the pillar " bearing it aloft 
that all may see it and recognize its 
mission of liberty, of light, and of life 
to the world. 

The Church is in existence to dis- 
charge a twofold function, the one 
internal — working effectively upon 
itself; the other external — having a 
tremendous influence upon the world. 
The native and original function of the 
Church is one of self-keeping and self- 
culture, taking care of its own mem- 
bers, teaching, training, defending, and 
strengthening them. In this sense, 
the Church is termed an asylum into 



VOX SPEI 53 

which the sin-weary and guilt-laden 
retreat and find in its holy service and 
its congenial society the atmosphere 
for which their souls crave ; the Church 
is a nursery where the feeble faith is 
cherished, until the faith becomes a 
trust that is unconquerable in its out- 
look ; the Church is a sanitarium where 
spiritual diseases are treated, where 
we diagnose the several ills of human 
life, and make a serious and successful 
application of remedies to every one ; 
the Church is a gymnasium where the 
spiritual faculties are put into exercise, 
where they are developed and prepared 
for the greatest endurance and the 
most successful efforts for God and 
humanity. But, on the other hand, 
the Church has a very important, a 
very holy function in regard to those 
who are without its borders, and with- 
out the possession of its great life. The 
Church has not only to act for its own 
members, but it is a representative of 
the Christ in the world; it has to do, 



54 VOX SPEI 

absolutely, the work of God in the 
world. The magnitude of this func- 
tion has not yet been realized by the 
Church ; the Church has not yet awak- 
ened to the fulness of its grand mission 
to the human race. Students of our 
medical institutions are brought very 
frequently face to face with the law 
and life of electricity. A limb of a 
bird, or some section of a dead frog or 
chicken, is placed upon the table, and 
upon the application of electricity the 
limb is made to move, and that which 
was dead moves with a new life. 
There is an energy which has its source 
in the great life of God Himself; and, 
when that energy, that life, comes into 
contact with the dead Church, a new 
action is seen and a new power is mani- 
fest everywhere. This is none other 
than Christ incarnated in the life of 
the Church to-day. 

The Church lacks spiritual power, 
there is a noticeable decline from the 
early apostolic efficiency and useful- 



VOX SPEI 55 

ness; this is easily apparent in the 
present relation of the Church to the 
masses, and the lack of intelligent en- 
thusiasm in the cause of modern mis- 
sions. " How may we reach the 
masses ?" is a question that has been 
put again and again at the religious 
conventions during the last twenty-five 
or fifty years, and it is a question which 
challenges the sanctity and wisdom of 
the Church at the close of the nine- 
teenth century. In the State of Ver- 
mont, some years ago, — the same is 
true of that State to-day, — forty towns, 
which may be considered models in 
regard to church attendance, were care- 
fully canvassed. All were counted as 
attendants who professed to be such, 
and all children and invalids in church- 
going families were included as attend- 
ants; it was found that only 44 per 
cent, of the population called them- 
selves church-goers. Fifteen counties 
were canvassed in the State of Maine, 
and of the 133,445 families, 67,842 re- 



56 VOX SPEI 

ported themselves as not attending any 
church. Five representative counties 
in the State of New York were care- 
fully canvassed, the percentage of 
church-goers was the same as in the 
State of Vermont ; while a careful and 
intelligent gentleman canvassed two of 
the large cities of New York on a very 
pleasant Sunday, and only 23 per cent, 
of the population were found in church. 
In an Ohio city, which has church ac- 
commodations for only one-half of its 
population, on a beautiful Sundaymorn- 
ing only 35 per cent, of the sittings were 
occupied. Our own town has an esti- 
mated population of about 1,500, with 
an average attendance at our church 
services of not 500 people. Yes, the 
words of America's most eminent and 
successful evangelist are fitting and 
very forceful indeed; this is what 
Moody says : ' ' The gulf between the 
Church and the masses is growing 
deeper, wider, and darker every hour. M 
I know there are noble and consecrated 



VOX SPEI 57 

men and women in the Church, the 
very material out of which heaven is 
made, men and women who sincerely 
believe that Christ died for everyone, 
who see in every man, however de- 
graded and besotted in sin and igno- 
rance, the possibility of a glorious like- 
ness to the Christ, — men and women 
who are actively and intelligently en- 
gaged that this possible likeness may 
speedily become an actuality. But a 
large portion of the Church is absolute- 
ly inactive in seeking to reach the 
masses, on account either of their self- 
ishness or wilful indifference and idle- 
ness. This is not the spirit of the Lord 
Christ, and they who have not His 
spirit are none of His. The token of 
fellowship with the Son of Man, the 
evidence of relationship with God, is 
not in a church-membership, in attend- 
ance at the Sunday services, in sanc- 
tified talking and loud praying; no, 
he only is a child of the living God who 
is interested in the lost, and who puts 



58 VOX SPEI 

forth every energy to bring men and 
women into the joy of a nobler, a bet- 
ter, a greater life, a life which is the 
gift of God. 

A glance at the modern missionary 
movement in its relation to the Church 
will further reveal the decline of the 
Church from the original apostolic 
spirit, so efficient and so successful. 
The amount which we spend for home 
work, for the evangelization of our own 
people, is $100,000,000 every year, and 
the amount which we spend on those 
who are unfortunate enough to be re- 
moved from us is the small sum of 
$5,200,000 annually. In the United 
States there is one Christian worker to 
every fifty persons, while in the for- 
eign field there is but one Christian 
worker to every twenty-four thousand 
of the population. It is related of the 
Duke of Wellington that, when a cer- 
tain chaplain asked him whether he 
thought it worth while to preach the 
gospel to the Hindoos, the man of 



VOX SPEI 59 

discipline replied with the question, 
1 ' What are your marching orders ? ' ' 
The chaplain replied, " Go ye into all 
the world and preach the gospel to 
every creature." " Then follow your 
orders," said the. duke; "your only 
duty is to obey. ' ' England is indebted 
to St. Augustine for her liberty, her 
integrity, and her learning, and St. 
Augustine was the first missionary to 
England. America is indebted to the 
Pilgrims for our unbending integrity, 
our honor, and all the good that we 
possess to-day, and the Pilgrims were 
missionaries to these shores. The law 
is good now; we have received and we 
must give ; Christ has spoken to this 
nation, and it is our " marching or- 
ders," it is our " duty," to carry that 
same message to the people beyond, 
the people everywhere. 

The Church is in existence to touch 
every condition and transform the con- 
duct of the world. The gospel of 
Christ was intended to govern every 



60 VOX SPEI 

human relation, and capable of solving 
the problems that grow out of every- 
one. Here, then, is the momentous 
question that confronts us : " Will the 
Church enlarge her conceptions and 
activities to the wide measure of her 
mission and apply the principles of the 
gospel to every department of human 
life?" This is the great opportunity 
of the Church, and by it she will gain 
a commanding influence over millions 
and fashion the unfolding civilization 
of the future. The Church, then, is 
to be inspired with a new and uncon- 
querable courage — a courage that 
springs from a full assurance of final 
and complete victory. The Christian- 
ity of Christ is to conquer every peo- 
ple, to sweeten every relationship, to 
sanctify every activity for the nobler 
living of the world, so that the ' ' New 
Jerusalem " will come down from God 
out of heaven and will be seen in the 
homes and hearts of the people every- 
where. This is an indisputable truth ; 



VOX SPEI 61 

and an assured truth, so great, with a 
hope so glorious, can never know dis- 
couragement. You have heard of the 
soldiers who, drawn up in long col- 
umns, awaited the assault of the ene- 
my ; some few were brave, but a large 
number of them were ready to retreat, 
when the voice of the commander rang 
out on the air: " Be brave, my men; 
we are sure to win the battle ! ' ' And 
to the brave the victory did come. 
There are many in the army of the 
Lord who hesitate and falter, who think 
that the work is too tremendous and 
that it cannot be done; while there 
are those who withhold their offerings 
to missions, and cry " Retrenchment, 
let us give up our posts and call some 
brave soldiers home." The voice of 
Christ is clear, and the message calls 
every one to duty: "Go, teach, I am 
with you unto the end; " and the end 
is a complete victory. 

At the siege of Cadiz by the French, 
in 1 8 12, men and women were killed in 



62 VOX SPEI 

the streets, at the windows, in the re- 
cesses of their homes. When a shell 
was thrown by the enemy, a single toll 
of the great city bell was the signal for 
the inhabitants to be on their guard. 
One day a solemn toll was heard in 
signal of a shell. That very shell went 
into the bell and broke it into atoms. 
The monk whose duty it was to sound 
it went up bravely and calmly and 
tolled the other bell, so that the people 
might be warned and their safety as- 
sured. The office of the Church is to 
toll the bell, to warn the people; and 
whatever may be the danger from the 
ranks of the enemy, it is the duty of 
the Church to ring, to warn, to keep! 
The steamer Forfarshire was on a voy- 
age from Hull to Dundee. She was 
in bad condition; the boilers were 
defective and the fires were put out. 
When she reached St. Abb's Head the 
storm drove her on Hawkers Rocks, 
and the cry of distress came from the 
passengers through the mists of the 



VOX SPEI 



63 



morning. That cry was heard by 
Grace Darling, the boat was lowered, 
and she immediately set out on her mis- 
sion of rescue. We sing, " Rescue 
the perishing/' It is time for the 
Church to act, we must get into the 
boat, we must save the people ! 




"Let this, then, be clearly understood, that 
whether we look at life from the side of culture, 
or from that of religion, in either case we must 
be guided by the ideal light, which is, indeed, 
the only real powerful guidance." —Shairp. 

" If you have not a conscience, Butler cannot 
give you one; and if you have a conscience, 
Paley cannot take from you." — Maurice. 

"Forming our notions of the constitution 
and government of the world upon reasoning, 
without foundation for the principles which we 
assume, whether from the attributes of God or 
anything else ; is building a world upon hypoth- 
esis, like Des Cartes." — Butler. 

" The inheritance of reason and impulse and 
the conflict that ensues between them may 
serve, and is evidently meant to serve, in the 
evolution of moral Character." — Gordon. 

1 ' Thought can never be compared with ac- 
tion, but when it awakens in us the image of 
truth." — Madame de Sta'eL 



Christ and the World's 
Thought 

Psalm Q4: ii (part) 

This is the age of extreme intellectual 
activity, the most active in the history 
of human thought. This is the age of 
intellectual freedom and every man is 
thinking for himself. This is the age 
that is carrying into practical opera- 
tion the system of the famous 
Descartes. " The most stupendous 
thought,' ' says the celebrated Ban- 
croft, " that ever was conceived by 
man, such as had never been dared by 
Socrates or the Academy, by Aristotle 
or the Stoics, took possession of Des- 
cartes in his meditations on a Novem- 
ber night by the banks of the Danube. 
His mind separated itself from every- 
thing besides, and in the consciousness 
of its own freedom stood over against 
tradition, all received opinion, all 



68 VOX SPEI 

knowledge, all existence, except itself, 
thus asserting the principle of Individ- 
uality as the key-note of all coming 
philosophy and political institutions. 
Nothing was to be received as truth 
by man which did not convince his 
reason. A new world was opened up 
in which every man was thenceforth 
to be his own philosopher/' This, 
then, is the system that has a frequent 
and enthusiastic advocacy from our 
institutions of learning, the chairs of 
thought ; this is the burden of the best 
literature that proceeds from our press ; 
while it is the object of the teachers in 
the common and district schools. We 
seem to hear in the voice of the oldest 
and most competent instructor down to 
the young and inexperienced teacher 
who has just taken his certificate, — we 
seem to hear them every one say: 
' ' Think, and think earnestly for your- 
self ; let no man, let no Synod, let no 
ecclesiastical council, let no political 
machine do your thinking for you, ' ' 



VOX SPEI 69 

This is certainly the age of Protest- 
antism in religion, and the age of 
Republicanism in the political history 
of the world. This is the spirit that 
had its illustration in the apostles Peter 
and John who, when forbidden by the 
Jewish court to preach the gospel in the 
porch of Solomon's Temple, made this 
courageous and memorable reply: 
" Whether it be right," said they, " to 
harken unto you more than unto God, 
judge ye; for we cannot but declare 
the truth/' This same spirit had its 
illustration, further, on a certain day 
in December, when Luther marched 
out of the gate of Wittenberg followed 
by a company of independent thinkers, 
the Descartes of the sixteenth century, 
and burned the Pope's Bull. Then 
followed the cruel and unceasing per- 
secutions from the part of the Church 
and State to prevent the people from 
thinking for themselves on the great 
subjects of politics and religion. But 
there is intellectual freedom to-day; 



70 VOX SPEI 

and, apart from the political intimida- 
tion and ecclesiastical threat, the intel- 
lect of man is in full enjoyment of the 
privileges that God first gave to the 
human race. Yes, the nineteenth 
century is a century of light, and a 
brilliant light in the intellectual sphere. 
About a hundred years ago the homes 
of the people were illuminated with 
those primitive lamps which the Scotch 
call " crusies," such as are taken from 
the Roman tombs. It was only in 1783 
the flat wick was invented by Leger, 
of Paris. Then came the illuminating 
gas. And as late as 1801 the famous 
novelist, Sir Walter Scott, wrote from 
London to a friend in the highlands in 
this way : ' ' There is a fool here who is 
trying to light the city with smoke. ' ' 
To-day, electricity lightens the cars 
that cross our continent, the ships that 
cross the water, and even the carriages 
that carry the businessmen to their 
offices and back to their homes again. 
And this same law of development has a 



VOX SPEI 71 

more striking example in the world of 
intellect. This is seen in science. 
Kepler and Galileo outgrew Coperni- 
cus, Newton improved on Kepler and 
Galileo; and, to-day, Laplace and 
Young and Proctor correct Newton's 
imperfect theory. The same advance 
is seen in philosophy as well as in poli- 
tics and religion. 

But this intellectual freedom, so won- 
derfully manifest in this age, has de- 
generated, in some quarters, into the 
idea that skepticism is an indication of 
thought. Blasphemous denunciations, 
scathing ridicule, travesties and bur- 
lesques in literature and art, wild rav- 
ings of communism, thin and vapid 
theosophies : all are doing their utter- 
most to overthrow the Christian relig- 
ion ; the religion of the Christ stands 
to-day unmarked amid the cannonade 
from such enemies, while the action of 
skepticism is working havoc in its own 
ranks, and soon the last enemy will 
linger and then pass away. 



72 



VOX SPEI 



This decline of the human intellect, 
this degeneracy of human thought, 
this skepticism of to-day is clearly 
shown in that department of science 
known as philosophy and biology. 
" By wide inductions of selected facts 
and the skillful grouping of certain 
principles supposed to control all activ- 
ity and all life, science claimed to have 
reasoned out a universe without a Cre- 
ator or a Ruler or a Judge." Con- 
science becomes simply a movement of 
the brain fibre; intuition is but the 
garnered experience from the early 
stages of the history of the world. 
Every man's destiny is written upon 
his nerve tissues, and the human soul 
is but a development of the ages. And 
they have the blasphemy to tell us 
that, when we look at our faces in a 
glass, we see no longer the image of 
the Creator, but, instead, there are 
shown in the cornea of the eye and in 
the rim of the ear slight traces of by- 
gone types of animal life. And, fight- 



VOX SPEI 73 

ing through the struggles, looking up 
through the mists for an infinite, lov- 
ing Father, such thinkers have the 
audacity, the villainy to tell us that we 
see only the " death's head " of agnos- 
ticism in the vacant heavens, and that 
the only providence is " a stream of 
tendency not ourselves, which makes 
for righteousness. ' ' Instead of looking 
for the eternal kingdom, where we are 
to rest from this ever-increasing strug- 
gle, where we are to enjoy the society 
of the pure and the great, we are told 
by such thinkers that there is no eter- 
nal kingdom, and that our only hope 
of relief is in the cohesive principle in 
the human family, the solidarity of 
the human race. 

Such thought robs the world's poetry 
of its sweetest song, and literature of 
its noblest and truest message to the 
human race. Such thought saps out 
of humanity that grand spirit that has 
started and fostered all our hospitals, 
our institutions of learning, and has 



74 VOX SPEI 

kept alive in the human breast that 
benevolence which is so pithily ex- 
pressed by Christ, "Love one another/ ' 
Such thought takes from man his best 
Friend, strips him of the consolation 
there comes from the belief that there 
is a God who is too wise to err, and 
too loving to be unkind. Such thought 
divests man of the garment which has 
covered him for these hundreds of 
years, and throws him out naked into 
a world, a world as cold as the Klon- 
dyke with no prospect of any gold. 
And against such thought God is direct- 
ing His forces. Such thought had its 
leaders in Bolingbroke and Chester- 
field, and against them Wesley and 
Whitefield went into the field and won 
a marvelous victory ; such thought had 
its leaders in Renan of France, Darwin 
of England, and Wallace of America, 
and against them God has sent into 
the field a noble army of consecrated 
men and women ; the war is now wag- 
ing, reports are full of encourage- 



VOX SPEI 75 

ment, and the victory will come by 
and by ! 

There is an atheism that shows itself 
in the circle of intelligence, and the 
culture that is antagonistic to God has 
its leaders in the persons of Mill and 
Darwin and Huxley. This indirect, 
this wilful evasion of the acknowledg- 
ment of a personal and supreme God, 
is well illustrated in the Lay Sermons 
by Huxley. He writes: " All who are 
competent to express an opinion upon 
the subject are, at present, agreed that 
the manifold varieties of animal and 
vegetable form have not either come 
into existence by chance, nor result 
from capricious exertions of creative 
power ; but that they have taken place 
in a definite order, the statement of 
which order is what men of science 
term a natural law." This is an ex- 
hibition of thought that is the source 
of profound sorrow to the religious 
world, while it is a condition of thought 
that has proved a great danger and a 



76 VOX SPEI 

stubborn detriment to a large portion 
of the thinking and reading public of 
to-day. But there is the opposite con- 
dition of thought, which is equally 
dangerous; yea, it is more dangerous 
because it is manifest in an infinitely 
larger circle of the human race. I now 
have reference to those people whose 
intellectual preparation has been very 
meagre, to those people who read but 
little and think even less. There is a 
great multitude of the human family 
whose thought of God is irreverent and 
ignorant, while they have no just and 
sensible conception of the just law of 
the Almighty. This class of people 
feeds its intellect on the sensational 
newspaper, the dime novel, and that 
class of reading which inflames the 
animal passions. They refer to God 
only in the heat of anger, and their 
reference to Him under such circum- 
stances is but open blasphemy ; while 
in this class there are those who refer 
to the Almighty in their vicious and 



VOX SPEI 77 

vulgar moods, and their reference to 
Him under such circumstances is but a 
barbarism as awful as that which is 
manifest in the densest heathenism of 
the hour. Such a class of people seem 
to have gone beyond the influence of 
the school, the college, the university, 
and the intelligence of the country 
seems powerless to reach and touch 
these people, while the churches seem 
sadly helpless in the face of this their 
greatest foe. There is hope for the 
intelligent opponent to Christianity, 
there are many evidences of change 
among the men and women whose in- 
telligence draws forth the admiration 
of the world; but those who live in 
such absolute indifference, if they are 
not reached and interested and saved, 
are sinking, with their children, deeper 
and deeper into the miasma of intel- 
lectual filth and moral decay. 

Christ's method of reforming such 
thought is the safest, and His thought 
is being universally understood and 



78 VOX SPEI 

accepted to-day. The greatest moral 
philosophers the world ever knew, Soc- 
rates, Plato, and Aristotle, taught in 
Athens. The echo of their teaching 
reached the city of Rome, and thence 
spread through all the civilized world. 
Their teaching certainly had a value, 
but only among the few thinkers of 
the day ; the salt of society had not yet 
been discovered, society was in a state 
of putrefaction, and there was no diag- 
nosis for the corruption of the hour. 
Then the Christ set forth a remedy, 
and that remedy was Himself ; so that 
the thought that has been above every 
form of thought is Christianity, and 
Christianity is Christ, — not a law, not 
a theory, not a code of morals, not a 
system of casuistry, not even an elab- 
orate theology. The thought that is 
mighty in its influence, the thought 
that is creative of the noblest char- 
acter, the thought that is the origin of 
life itself, is in the person of the Son 
of Man and the Son of God : — 



VOX SPEI 79 

" There's a fount about to stream, 
There's a light about to gleam, 
There's a midnight darkness changing into 

day; 
Men of thought and men of action, clear the 
way!" 

" I hear the sound of conflict yon- 
der/' said blind John of Bohemia at 
the battle of Crecy. He was old and 
blind and wounded unto death. His 
French troops were wavering and fall- 
ing back ; he called to them : U I hear 
the sound of glorious conflict yonder ! 
You are my vassals ; gather about me 
close, and lead me on so far that I may 
swing my sword just once more ! " He 
who believes in God, in the Christ, 
and in the logic of events, must already 
hear the sound of conflict and see the 
tokens of a future and final conflict and 
conquest. The thought of the Christ 
is already chiselled into the master- 
pieces of art, it is already written into 
the sweetest lines of poetry, it is 
already sung in the most enchanting 



80 VOX SPEI 

music of to-day. We hear the tread 
of a mighty though silent company 
that proceeds from the hill of Calvary ; 
they are touching every land, and peo- 
ple everywhere are acknowledging the 
truth of their position, and are falling 
into line. We hear the bells of heaven 
and the bells of earth which welcome 
the Christ to the hearts of men : — 

" Ring out the old, ring in the new; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true; 
Ring out old shapes of foul disease, 
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold ; 
Ring out the thousand wars of old, 
Ring in the thousand years of peace ! 
Ring in the valiant men and free, 
The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be ! ' ' 




" And ye became imitators of us, and of the 
Lord, having received the word in much afflic- 
tion, with joy of the Holy Ghost.' ' — Paul. 



Literature that Lasts 

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST 

— Thomas a Kemftis 

Reading is certainly more universally 
enjoyed to-day than in any preceding 
age of the world's history. This is 
partly on account of the great advance 
in common-school education, and the 
advantages which are within the reach 
of nearly all to enjoy the benefits of 
the college and the university ; this is 
also partly on account of the reason- 
ableness and even cheapness with 
which literature can come into the 
hands of all alike. But we must de- 
plore the tendency of to-day, that so 
many even intelligent people permit 
themselves to read a class of literature 
that is merely secondly, or even thirdly 
rated by the most competent and trusted 
reading persons of this age. There is 
a growing tendency on the part of the 
reading public to read a class of fiction 



8 4 



VOX SPEI 



that cannot possibly live many years, 
to the utter exclusion of the great mas- 
terpieces in the world's literature. To 
these, Richard de Bury, the Bishop of 
Durham, refers in the words: " These 
are the masters who instruct us with- 
out rods or ferules, without hard words 
and anger, without clothes or money. 
If you approach them, they are not 
asleep; if investigating you interro- 
gate them, they conceal nothing; if you 
mistake them, they never grumble; if 
you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at 
you." It is to that classic and historic 
literature, which contains our greatest 
instructors, our most commanding 
leaders, and our most trusted friends; 
it is to those books which linger like 
a sweet perfume in the history of the 
world's lasting literature, that Southey 
refers in the lines : — 

" My days among the dead are pass'd, 
Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 
The mighty minds of old; 



VOX SPEI 85 

My never-failing friends are they, 
With whom I converse day by day. ' ' 

Yes, it is one of the deplorable tend- 
encies of to-day that so many people 
will read a class of fiction whose tend- 
ency is moral, but whose object is 
only to interest and entertain ; it is a 
dark spot on the intelligent manhood 
and womanhood of our country that 
they will read such literature and neg- 
lect entirely the class of reading 
which has been the mental food of the 
world's greatest people. Sir John 
Herschel tells a story that illustrates 
the apparent recklessness with which 
people will permit themselves to be 
carried off with a fiction, the food in 
which, if the intelligent Christian 
world had to subsist upon it, they 
would quickly be reduced to mere 
moral, intellectual, and spiritual pig- 
mies. In a village the blacksmith got 
hold of Richardson's novel Pamela, or 
Virtue Rewarded. He gathered some 
of the villagers together, and as he sat 



86 VOX SPEI 

on the anvil he read to them night after 
night the story. At length, when the 
happy turn of fortune arrived which 
brought the hero and heroine together 
and put them in happy living terms 
together for a long time, the villagers 
were so delighted that they jumped to 
their feet and raised a shout, and pro- 
curing the church keys, they actually 
set the parish bells ringing. This is 
Herschel's story, which too sadly finds 
a reality among the reading public in 
the United States. I therefore plead 
for a more intelligent and sympathetic 
interest in a more permanent, a more 
praiseworthy, a more powerful class of 
literature. Among the books in this 
class, to which I shall draw your atten- 
tion, the first is The Imitation of Christ. 
This book was written over four 
hundred years ago, in the dark, cold 
and unchristian age of the fifteenth 
century; the age when Huss and Sav- 
onarola were burned at the stake, and 
Wycliffe was silenced in death. It 



VOX SPEI 87 

was written amid the lax and unmanly 
living of that age, against which it 
directed a strong and a most deadly 
blow. Religion was a form which con- 
tained no force, and even the leaders 
themselves had lost the power of great 
leadership. This book, The Imitation 
of Christ, was written to correct an 
error of that day, it was written to sup- 
ply a great deficiency at that time; 
this book was intended to introduce to 
the notice of that generation the high- 
est Man after whom the people could 
pattern, and a Leader in whose hands 
they could safely trust the movements 
and motives of their destiny. And so 
classic and commanding and Christian 
is its tone, that for more than four hun- 
dred years it has supplied incentives to 
the noblest lives in the world's biog- 
raphy, it has had the widest circulation 
of any book in the history of the world, 
excepting only the Bible itself. This 
is a book which ought to be read to- 
day, the message which it contains is 



88 VOX SPEI 

one that we need at the close of the 
nineteenth century — Christ the ex- 
ample of the best thinking, the truest 
living, and the noblest manhood for 
the world. 

The Imitation of Christ is a book that 
delineates the conduct and the charac- 
ter of the Son of Man, and at the same 
time the Son of God. This book brings 
to the notice of mankind the command- 
ing characteristics of the greatest life 
this world has ever known, and 
intelligently and urgently asks our 
unceasing imitation of them. The 
characteristics which this book asks us 
to imitate are very many ; the first we 
shall notice is : 

i. Sincerity, or the joy of a good 
conscience. Here Thomas h Kempis 
goes to the cardinal conditions of the 
noblest and most effective character in 
the life of mankind. A good con- 
science is the best and most reliable 
companion that it is possible for us to 
enjoy; and he who lives in obedience 



VOX SPEI 89 



to such an authority, his sincerity will 
be a blessing to himself and a benedic- 
tion to the world. This is what Thomas 
a Kempis says in his book : ' ' The ' re- 
joicing ' of a good man is ' the testi- 
mony of a good conscience/ A pure 
conscience is the ground of perpetual 
exultation; it will support us under 
the severest trial, and enable us to re- 
joice in the depths of adversity; but 
an evil conscience, in every state of 
life, is full of disquietude and fear." 

That life is not always the noblest 
life upon which men heap their high 
and flattering and even commendable 
praises. The condition of our individ- 
ual sincerity does not depend upon our 
relationship to our fellow-men; indi- 
vidual sincerity is an internal condition 
and conduct, it is loyalty to the " mas- 
ter that is within me." It has been 
truthfully said, " Loss of sincerity is 
loss of vital power.' ' Who are the 
conspicuous and commanding figures 
in science, or letters, or poetry, or 



9 o VOX SPEI 

statesmanship, or the leaders of the 
past history of the world? They are 
not the scientific, the learned, the poet- 
ical, or the statesmanlike; but in every 
case they have been the sincere men. 
Notice, further, what Thomas h 
Kempis writes in his admirable book : 
" He only can have great tranquility 
whose happiness depends not on the 
praise or the dispraise of men. If thy 
conscience was pure, thou wouldst be 
contented in every condition and un- 
disturbed by the opinions and reports 
of men concerning thee ; for their com- 
mendations can add nothing to thy 
holiness, nor their censures take any- 
thing from it : what thou art, thou art ; 
nor can the praise of the whole world 
make thee greater in the sight of God. 
Yes, the salvation of character is its 
sincerity, and when sincerity controls 
the executive departments of our civic 
and national life, a brighter light will 
break over our hills and a new life will 
be found in our streets. 



VOX SPEI 91 

" Let us, then, be what we are, and speak what 
we think, and in all things 
Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sacred 
professions of friendship. " 

Cicero was one of the sincere men of 
the ancient days. Some time after his 
assassination, Caesar found one of his 
grandsons with a book of Cicero in his 
hands. The boy tried to hide it; but 
Caesar took it from him, and looking 
over it he returned it to the boy, say- 
ing: " My dear child, this was an elo- 
quent man and a lover of his coun- 
try.' ' Yes, the most eloquent and 
the most patriotic are the sincere of 
the land. 

2. The next message which The Im- 
itation of Christ bears to mankind is the 
knowledge of and devotion to Truth. 
The Bible is a truthful book, it is the 
medium of the truth to the intellect 
of the world. And an open antago- 
nism to the Bible is, almost in every 
case, a lack of the knowledge of its 
important information. There is cer- 



92 VOX SPEI 

tainly a very important sentiment in 
these lines: — 

" O Truth is easy, and the light shines clear 
In hearts kept open, honest and sincere.' ' 

This is what we read in The Imitation 
of Christ : ' ' Blessed is the man whom 
eternal truth teacheth, not by obscure 
figures and transient sounds, but by 
direct and full communication! The 
perceptions of our senses are narrow 
and dull, and our reasoning on those 
perceptions frequently mislead us. 
. . . What have redeemed souls to 
do with the distinctions and subtleties 
of logical divinity? He whom the 
eternal Word condescendeth to teach is 
disengaged at once from the labyrinth 
of human opinions. For 'of one word 
are all things ; ' and all things without 
voice or language speak of Him alone ; 
He is that divine principle which speak- 
eth in our hearts, and without which 
there can be neither just apprehension 
nor rectitude of judgment." 



VOX SPEI 93 

It is readily conceded that those who 
have a knowledge of the truth, — not a 
pretention of the truth, but the truth 
embodied in reality in their lives, — 
that such will be truthful in them- 
selves. The mind of man is his great- 
est endowment, and it is his intellect- 
ual ability that distinguishes him from 
the lower brute creation. It is surely 
vain and vitiating to read any other 
books than the best, the purest, the 
most informing ; and it is a detriment 
to crowd any other thoughts into the 
intellect than the greatest and most 
lasting. The truth which I recom- 
mend for your reception is the truth 
which is to be found in science, in 
philosophy, in poetry, and in the Bible 
itself. 

Listen to what Thomas h Kempis 
writes in his book: " In the Scrip- 
tures, and all other books, it is im- 
provement in holiness, not pleasure in 
the subtlety of thought or the accuracy 
of expression that must be principally 



94 VOX SPEI 

regarded. . . . Whatever book 
thou readest, suffer not thy mind to be 
influenced by the character of the writ- 
er, whether his literary accomplish- 
ments be great or small. Let the only 
motive to read be the love of the truth ; 
and instead of inquiring who it is that 
writes, give all thy attention to the 
nature of what is written." 

I must now pass on to my third ob- 
servation. 

3. The third message which The 
Imitation of Christ announces to man- 
kind is faith in and the friendship of 
the Lord Christ. Faith is one of the 
simple actions of a Christian life ; but 
through this action there comes to the 
believer the aid of the unseen and the 
wealth of the riches of the other world : 
and fact is the foundation and force of 
an enlightened Christian faith. It is 
this faith makes possible and precious 
the friendship of the Lord Christ. To 
detail all the benefits that come through 
such a friendship would exhaust all 



VOX SPEI 95 

language, and more than a hundred 
times multiply the number of books in 
the world. I must ask you again to 
listen to the language of Thomas h, 
Kempis : ' ' The love of the creature is 
deceitful and unstable; the love of 
Jesus is faithful and permanent. He 
that adheres to any creature must fail 
when the creature fails; but he that 
adheres to Jesus will be established 
with Him forever. Cherish His love 
who, though the heavens and the earth 
should be dissolved, will not forsake 
thee nor suffer thee to perish." 

And Thomas h Kempis, in his mas- 
terly, in his marvelously simple way, 
thus speaks of the friendship of the 
Lord Jesus : ' ' It requires skill to con- 
verse with Jesus, and wisdom to know 
how to keep Him ; but not the skill of 
men, nor the wisdom of this world. 
Be humble and peaceful, and Jesus will 
come to thee ; be devout and meek, and 
he will dwell with thee. Without a 
friend, life is unenjoyed ; and unless 



96 VOX SPEI 

Jesus be thy Friend, infinitely loved 
and preferred above all others, life will 
be to thee a desolation/ ' 

A worthy friend adds to our happi- 
ness, a pure and noble friend creates a 
greatness in our lives. Some seem to 
make a man a friend because he is a 
neighbor, because he is in the same 
business, or because he happens to 
travel on the same street-car or rail- 
way. A friend ought to be selected as 
the consequence of deliberate thought ; 
you ought to know the ability, the 
worth, the greatness of the one you 
select. Then turn your attention to 
the Christ, see if He is not worthy of 
your friendship, think of Him, and see 
if He is not worthy to be your best and 
most constant friend. 

" What a friend we have in Jesus, 
All our sins and griefs to bear." 




' ' Let us go forth therefore unto Him without 
the camp, bearing His reproach. For here have 
we no continuing city, but we seek one to 
come." — Paul. 



Literature that Lasts 

pilgrim's progress 

—John Bunyan 
A book is the product of the mind, 
and the mind of man is almost in- 
variably colored by the events that 
take place during the period of the 
development of that mind. The au- 
thor of Pilgrim's Progress, John Bun- 
yan, was born in the year 1628, and 
the seventeenth century, in England, 
was a period of tremendous struggle 
against a corrupt rule and a still more 
corrupt religion. The corrupt religion 
had its leader in such an ecclesiastical 
despot as Archbishop Laud, " the man 
who represented and embodied in his 
small person and unexpansive mind all 
those distorted views and stifling prin- 
ciples which the English nation has 
grown out of, and is almost ashamed 
to remember; the sworn foe of polit- 



ioo VOX SPEI 

ical and religious liberty, the cham- 
pion of a close and cruel intolerance, 
the fussy inquisitor, the ubiquitous 
spy, the man who lost the patriot in 
the priest, th.2 Christian in the eccle- 
siastic, the man in the machinery, the 
idolater of form and uniform, slave of 
etiquette and master of postures, who 
substituted gewgaws for grace, can- 
dles for conscience, rubrics for right- 
eousness, and dead works for a living 
God." The corrupt rule had its ad- 
vocates in the unscrupulous person of 
the Earl of Stradford, and in the 
wasteful and wicked movements of 
such kings as James the First and 
Charles the First. It was James the 
First who, in the year 1610, squan- 
dered $8,400 extra in wines, $120,000 
in plate and jewels, appropriated to 
his own personal wealth the amount 
of $500,000; he gave away presents 
that equaled $250,000 more, while the 
queen spent over $70,000 in personal 
adornment. 



VOX SPEI 101 

The age in which the Pilgrim s Prog- 
ress was written was the age of the 
struggle and ascendency of Protestant- 
ism, and this great army had its lead- 
ers in such a fearless and forceful 
soldier as Oliver Cromwell; such a 
commanding and conspicuous genius 
as John Milton, the greatest of our 
epic poets ; such a striking and straight- 
forward statesman as John Hampden ; 
and such a painstaking and practical 
preacher as John Bunyan. The Puri- 
tans believed that man was great not 
by virtue of his humanity, but by 
virtue of his kinship with God. He 
was nothing unless he was a temple 
of the divine. It was the fatherhood 
of God that ennobled him. It was faith 
and spiritual receptivity that made 
him strong. It was moral qualities 
that gave him all his worth. The 
Puritans knew nothing of the modern 
rant which claims for all men a nat- 
ural equality, which professes a sort 
of sublime indifference to moral dis- 



102 VOX SPEI 

tinctions, which demands for the in- 
dolent and thriftless the rewards of 
the sober and the dutiful. This com- 
mon talk about human equality is 
mere bubble blowing. Starting from 
a religious foundation, there is some 
ground for it; see it in the light of 
God, and it may bear some examina- 
tion; acknowledge that we are the 
children of God, and alike dear to 
Him, and it may be brought about, — 
but apart from that it is a theory that 
explodes in laughter. No contrivances 
can make men equal. We may pro- 
claim equality by a thousand acts of 
legislature, we cannot render it a fact 
or induce the world to believe it. It 
is love to God that forms the founda- 
tion of equality among men 5 and 
where this principle is absent there 
is strife and division, superiority and 
inferiority; where this principle of 
love is absent mankind is divided into 
masters and slaves. 

It was amid such thought as this 



VOX SPEI 103 

that the Pilgrim ' s Progress had its birth, 
while the personal, experimental con- 
ditions of his own life gave the book 
its lasting charm. Bunyan had the 
element of sensibility much keener 
than any of his fellow-men, while his 
imagination was so vivid that at times 
his internal struggles were very se- 
vere. He felt that he had sold Christ, 
that God had turned him off, and that 
he had a demon actually in his life. 
Sometimes a loud voice would cry to 
him from heaven warning him of his 
danger, while at other times he would 
feel that fiends were near and strongly 
induced him to extreme wickedness. 
His imagination was the marvel of 
his day, l i he sometimes saw visions 
of distant mountain tops, on which the 
sun shone brightly, but from which 
he was separated by a waste of snow/' 
He sometimes felt that the devil was 
behind him pulling his clothes. One 
day he shook like a man in the palsy. 
On another day he would feel a fire 



104 VOX SPEI 

within him. Then at last light broke 
into his darkness, and from the depths 
of despair he passed into the delight- 
ful assurance of God's favor and joy. 
When Napoleon, at the age of twenty- 
six, became the commander of the 
army of Italy, he found the soldiers 
dissatisfied and disorganized. " Sol- 
diers/ ' he said, " you are badly fed, 
naked, and miserable among barren 
rocks. I will lead you down into the 
richest plains of the world. Great 
cities full of wealth, whole provinces 
will fall into your power ; in them you 
will acquire all you want — fame, 
treasure, repose. Soldiers of the army 
of Italy, with this prospect will your 
hearts fail? No; surely not. For- 
ward !" With this Napoleon led his 
men on to victory. When John Bun- 
yan became a Christian, he found Eng- 
land dishonored and filled with dis- 
may. He said: " You have a state- 
religion that has no life, and the spirit 
among the Protestants is not always 



VOX SPEI 105 

commendable. You are depending 
upon the gross and material condi- 
tions of your own making ; it is God's 
grace that will accomplish, and faith 
in Him will do it all." And with the 
open Bible Bunyan led England and 
the world into a nobler and much 
greater life. 

John Bunyan, during the early years 
of his youth, may have been consid- 
ered a member of the Established 
Church of England, later he became 
a dissenter, and finally he united with 
a Baptist church. For becoming a 
dissenter he was put into prison for 
twelve years, during which weary time 
he had for his companions The Book of 
Martyrs, and the Bible. It was while 
in prison that he wrote the immortal 
Pilgrim's Progress, The Pilgrim s Prog- 
ress, next to the Bible, is the most 
wonderful book in the world, it is the 
admiration of the critics, while it is 
the unfailing joy of the common peo- 
ple. Dr. Samuel Johnson, whose stud- 



106 VOX SPEI 

ies were all unsystematic and discon- 
nected, and who hated, as he said, to 
read books through, made a noble 
exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress. The Pilgrim s Progress was one 
of the two or three works which Dr. 
Johnson felt ought to be much longer. 
In the rural district the Pilgrim s Prog- 
ress is the ever-increasing pleasure of 
the peasants ; in the shops and facto- 
ries and warehouses where are congre- 
gated the masses, the common people, 
the Pilgrim s Progress has the longest 
claim upon their reading hours, the 
story the book has to tell being cap- 
tivating in the extreme; in the cen- 
ters of learning, in the halls of science 
and philosophy and fine arts, the Pil- 
grim s Progress is the wonder, the 
wealth, the wisdom of the great. This 
is the third book I ask you to read, 
which for magnificence, for pathos, 
for pure, refined English, for truth 
that is clear and forceful like the 
Scriptures, " for every purpose of the 



VOX SPEI 107 

poet, the orator, and the divine," 
stands high above every other. The 
Pilgrim s Progress has been the con- 
stant companion of all the greatest 
people in the last two hundred years, 
and the thought the book presents 
has been the food of the greatest intel- 
lects of the world; read, then, the Pil- 
grim s Progress. 

There are many important features, 
all of which ought to have an equal 
prominence, in the Pilgrim s Progress. 
The first thought that seems to pre- 
sent itself is that this life is distinc- 
tively a march ; the second thought is 
that this march is attended by deci- 
sive conflicts ; and the third thought is 
that this march leads to a celestial city. 

1. The first thought, then, is that 
this life is a march. The Pilgrim s 
Progress represents man in the act of 
starting on a journey, leaving the 
11 City of Destruction " for an eventful 
and successful march. The path of 
this march is represented as straight 



io8 



VOX SPEI 



ahead, and so graphic is the picture 
that the pathway is as familiar to us 
as the road is along which we walk 
from day to day. This, therefore, 
pronounces the book the highest mir- 
acle of human genius. The natural- 
ness with which the march is depicted 
makes us easily familiar with every 
ascent and declivity, every resting- 
place and turn-stile along the road. 
How picturesque, how vivid; there 
is nothing more sublime in all the 
English language than the opening 
part of Bunyan's great book; he 
writes: "As I walked through the 
wilderness of this world I lighted on 
a certain place where there was a den 
[that is, the Bedford prison] and I laid 
me down in that place to sleep, and 
as I slept I dreamed a dream. I 
dreamed, and behold I saw a man, a 
man clothed in rags, standing with his 
face from his own home with a book 
in his hand, and a great burden upon 
his back." 



VOX SPEI 109 

Here is certainly room for the advo- 
cacy of a great truth. Life in every 
department is a march, but there are 
only some who attempt the journey, 
while there are some who have started 
in the journey but have made little 
progress indeed. The acquirement of 
knowledge is a march, it is the march 
of the human intellect. Knowledge 
diverts and disciplines mankind. 
Knowledge fills mankind with varied 
and rational ideas, and prevents them 
from falling into despondency and 
hopeless despair. Knowledge gives to 
mankind determinate thoughts instead 
of eccentric fancies, pliable opinions 
for fixed convictions ; replaces impetu- 
ous images by calm reasonings, sud- 
den resolves by carefully-weighed de- 
cisions. Knowledge furnishes us with 
the wisdom and ideas of others, the 
best and most influential in the world's 
history; knowledge gives us con- 
science and self-command. This is a 
march on which we ought to enter, 



no VOX SPEI 

and in which bend every energy we 
have. 

The development of character is a 
march, it is the march of the human 
soul. " Character/ ' says Emerson, 
i l is higher than intellect. ... A 
great soul will be strong to live, as 
well as to think. ' ' The highest thing 
in life is character, and character is 
the most valuable commodity in the 
market to-day. Character is human 
nature in its best form ; it is the moral 
and the spiritual embodied in the in- 
dividual. Character is the conscience 
of society, while it is the motive power 
of every well-governed State. Even 
in war, Napoleon said, the moral is to 
the physical as ten to one. Canning 
very wisely wrote in 1801: " My 
road must be through character to 
power , I will try no other course ; 
I am sanguine enough to believe that 
this course, though perhaps not the 
quickest, is the surest." There is a 
great truth in what Lord John Russell 



VOX SPEI in 

once said : ' ' It is the nature, ' ' said Rus- 
sell, ' ' of party in England not to ask the 
assistance of men of genius, but to fol- 
low the guidance of men of character/' 
Yes, life is a march, and whither are 
we tending? In this march let the 
Lord Christ be our Companion, and 
let the name of the city to which we 
journey be " Knowledge and Charac- 
ter;" let us arise, and let the march 
be onward and upward with great 
speed. 

2. The second thought which the 
Pilgrim s Progress contains is that this 
march is attended by decisive conflicts. 
In the Pilgrim s Progress the man who 
starts on his journey or his march is 
represented as struggling in the great 
Slough of Despond, and despondency 
is one of the subtle enemies of the hu- 
man race; further on in this march 
the man is represented as meeting 
Apollyon, who is right across the path- 
way to stop his journey; a struggle 
ensues, and the pilgrim overcomes the 



ii2 VOX SPEI 

enemy; while still further on in the 
march the man enters ' i Vanity Fair, ' ' 
and it is the frivolous, the fast, the 
fleeting in this life that form a gigan- 
tic enemy which must be fought and 
overcome. During the progress of this 
march, moreover, the traveler meets 
several persons, with nearly all of 
whom he has a conflict ; he meets Mr. 
Worldly Wiseman, and a little later 
on in the march Mr. Hypocrisy, and 
then Lord Hategood, and Mr. Talka- 
tive, and Mrs. Timorous, and many 
more. 

Thus the Pilgrims Progress brings us 
face to face with a fact that confronts 
every life to-day; yes, every life has 
its conflicts, conflicts which bring vic- 
tory to some, while others meet with 
defeat. I think it is Greasy who 
mentions in his Fifteen Decisive Battles 
that in 1815, during the famous Battle 
of Waterloo, a company was stationed 
at a very important post, and com- 
manded to hold it till they were re- 



VOX SPEI 113 

lieved. The French rolled like moun- 
tains in every direction; the company- 
sent to the Duke of Wellington for 
assistance, and he told them to " stand 
firm," and they had the assurance of 
his help behind them. In a battle of 
wider dimensions, the command comes 
to us, " Stand fast, immovable/ ' and 
we have the assurance of the great 
Captain behind us in the conflict, and 
with Christ in the conflict there is 
victory every time ; with Christ in the 
conflict we defy all our enemies, even 
the enemy of death. 

3. The third thought contained in 
this remarkable book is that this march 
leads to a " Celestial City." At last 
the man on his march arrives at the 
gate to the celestial city. The angels 
who conducted him to the gate tell 
the keeper that he came out of great 
tribulation for the love he had to the 
King ; the pilgrim presents his certifi- 
cate, the certificate is presented to the 
King, the King orders the door to be 



ii4 VOX SPEI 

opened, and as he enters one says to 
him : ' ' Come ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world: 
enter you into the joy of your Lord/' 
The thought that is struggling for a 
solution, the questions that are put for 
an intelligent reply, are these: " Is 
heaven a reality ?" " Where is its lo- 
cation ?" "What is the character of 
its occupants, and what is its occupa- 
tion ?" Yes, there is a celestial city, 
there is a heaven. The language of 
Christ is clear on this important sub- 
ject: " In my Father's house are many 
mansions/ ' " I go to prepare a place 
for you." " And these shall go away 
into everlasting punishment; but the 
righteous into life eternal." The con- 
science of the human race claims the 
truth of this great truth. If there is 
no heaven, then human life is a colos- 
sal enigma, and the Christian religion 
is a huge mistake ; if there is no heav- 
en then the martyrs have suffered in 



VOX SPEI 115 

vain, and the good have received no 
reward for their heroic deeds. I do 
not know where heaven is, I cannot 
tell what is the occupation there ; but 
I do know that Christ is alive, that He 
is with the Father, and that heaven is 
where the Father and the Son dwell 
for evermore. " Let not your heart 
be troubled. In my Father's house 
are many mansions. Because I live 
ye shall live also." These are the 
words of Him who was dead and is 
alive for evermore. Heaven is open 
for us all, shall we enter in? 




" Prove what is that good, and acceptable, 
and perfect will of God. Prove all things \ hold 
fast that which is good." — Paul, 



Literature that Lasts 

THE ANALOGY OF RELIGION 

— Dr. Joseph Butler 

This is one of the important books of 
English literature, and in a certain 
department it is the most important 
book in the thought and theology of 
the Christian Church. The author, 
Joseph Butler, was born at Wantage, 
in Berkshire, England, on the 18th of 
May, 1692. Thus his life was born 
into circumstances which surrounded 
such praiseworthy and powerful schol- 
ars as Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Hare, 
and Dr. Doddridge; Joseph Addison, 
Matthew Tyndal, Lord Bolingbroke, 
and many more equally prominent. 
In early life the thoughts of young 
Butler were turned to philosophy and 
theology, and while still quite young, 
he entered into a controversy with Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, in which the English 



120 VOX SPEI 

people were permitted to see the 
greatness of a mind that was to be 
devoted to the interests of Christianity. 
And if Savonarola was a God-raised 
man, brought to the stage of action 
that Italy might be cleaned of its indi- 
vidual and national corruption; if 
Luther was a God-raised man, intended 
by the Creator to be a leader in the 
overthrow of formality and oppression 
and lifelessness found in the Romish 
Church ; then Joseph Butler was a man 
raised of God to go into battle against 
the skepticism which had its advocates 
in such writers as Lord Herbert and 
David Hume ; Joseph Butler was raised 
of God to go into battle against, and 
completely overthrow, the subtle deism 
of Matthew Tyndal and Lord Boling- 
broke. 

The Analogy of Religion was published 
in 1736, and is one of the great pro- 
ductions of English theology, while 
the book itself is one of the master- 
pieces of English literature. Dr. 



VOX SPEI 121 

Joseph Butler devoted seven of the 
ripest years of his mental and spiritual 
life in the preparation of this book, 
and these have been the seven years of 
labor that have told more profoundly 
on the thought and life of Christianity 
than any other seven years of any 
other writer in the history of letters 
and religion. This is certainly the 
sentiment of the greatest writers, while 
this is the place given to this book by 
the scholarship of the world since its 
production. Sir James Mackintosh, 
in his Progress of Ethical Philosophy, 
writes after this manner, speaking of 
the Analogy, " The most original and 
profound work extant in any language 
on the philosophy of religion." Lord 
Brougham, in a discourse on Natural 
Theology, says, speaking again of the 
Analogy, " The most argumentative 
and philosophical defense of Chris- 
tianity ever submitted to the world." 
While Thomas Chalmers, in his preface 
to the Bridgewater Treatise, makes this 



122 VOX SPEI 

■ — - • 

remarkable acknowledgment, " I have 
derived greater aid from the views 
and reasonings of Bishop Butler than 
I have been able to find besides in the 
whole of our extant authorship." And 
this is the second book, whose worth 
and wisdom have been tested by the 
greatest minds, that has been produced 
during the last one hundred and fifty 
years; this is the book that has had 
the highest place given it in the philoso- 
phy of the Christian religion ; this is 
the second book which I recommend 
to your attention, and for which I ear- 
nestly ask your immediate and best 
thought: read The Analogy of Religion , 
by Dr. Joseph Butler! 

Though this book was written more 
than one hundred and fifty years ago, 
yet the circumstances of to-day are 
very similar to those of the time of 
Butler, and the book, therefore, bears 
a message to the people living at the 
close of the nineteenth century. When 
the Analogy appeared, there was 



VOX SPEI 123 

scarcely any vital Christian life in the 
Established Church of England, and 
Dr. Doddridge is the authority for the 
statement that the Dissenters, or the 
Protestants, were in a state of spiritual 
decay. Amid the lifelessness that 
seemed to prevail among all sections 
of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
it had come ' ' to be taken for granted, ' ' 
says Butler, ' ' by many persons, that 
Christianity is not so much a subject 
of inquiry ; but that it is now at length 
discovered to be fictitious. And ac- 
cordingly, they treat it as if, in the 
present age, this were an agreed point 
among all the people of discernment ; 
and nothing remained but to set it 
up as a principal subject of mirth and 
ridicule." And, referring to the cir- 
cumstances of that time, another able 
and trusted writer says, " I have lived 
to see that fatal crisis when religion 
hath lost its hold on the minds of the 
people." While Macaulay refers to 
the period in which Butler wrote his 



i2 4 VOX SPEI 

famous book as irreverent, loose in 
morals, and very lax in other respects. 
These circumstances were aggravated 
by stich writers as Woolston, Tyndal, 
and Collins, who > were three bitter 
opponents to vital Christianity. Wool- 
ston directed his force against the 
miracles of the Scriptures; Tyndal 
pointed his sword against the validity, 
or divine sanction of the Bible ; while 
Collins gave his attention in trying to 
prove that prophecy was nothing else 
but a huge pretension. Such were 
the conditions that surrounded Butler, 
and such are the conditions at the 
close of the nineteenth century. There 
are men and women in this day who 
are led captive by a skepticism that 
played havoc in England during the 
last century ; there are some who hold 
up the religion of the Christ as a subject 
for mirth and ridicule ; there are those 
who say that miracles are only move- 
ments in natural law, and that the 
Bible has no other claim upon the mind 



VOX SPEI 125 

of mankind than that which any good 
book has, and that there is no such 
thing as prophecy, as there is no God, 
and no man can foretell the future to 
his brothers. The Analogy is the book 
that saved the English people of the 
last century from the mental and spir- 
itual death to which they were hasten- 
ing, and this is the book that deserves 
and demands our attention to-day, 
for, what it did a hundred and fifty 
years ago, it will do even now ! 

The book we have under considera- 
tion is avowedly important in the pro- 
found thought that it presents, — it is 
a book that has claimed the attention 
of the greatest intellects during the 
last one hundred and fifty years. It 
will be absolutely impossible for me, 
in this single attempt, to bring before 
you the wealth of the thought which 
this great work contains. But permit 
me to point out some of the truths 
that this book seeks to establish. 

1 . The first truth which the A nalogy 



126 VOX SPEI 

makes clear is the Personality of God. 
This was the truth that needed a loud 
and loyal advocate in the eighteenth 
century, and it needs just such an ad- 
vocate to-day. Butler establishes, in 
a most masterly way, the personality 
of God, both from the standpoint of 
natural and revealed religion ; he calls 
nature to his assistance, and makes 
her speak eloquently in the interest of 
his teaching, in the establishment of 
his thought. To use the words of the 
Analogy: "As the manifold appear- 
ances of design and final causes, in the 
constitution of the world, prove it to 
be the work of an intelligent Mind, so 
the particular final causes of pleasure 
and pain, distributed among his creat- 
ures, prove that they are under his 
government/ ' Butler, in the Analogy \ 
does not point us to the mere prin- 
ciple of gravitation, he does not ask us 
to bestow our affection on a fixed star, 
he does not entreat us to lay up treas- 
ures in the clouds, he does not com- 



VOX SPEI 127 

mand us to look away into the mist of 
infinite space, and as a man in the dark 
grope that he might touch something 
or some one; Butler, in the Analogy, 
makes absolutely clear the individu- 
ality, the personality of the Creator 
of the universe. 

This position, so firmly established 
by Butler, has often been proved with 
accumulated evidence, from the argu- 
ment of analogy and final causes, from 
abstract reasonings, from the most an- 
cient tradition and testimony, and from 
the general consent of mankind. To 
love mere space, to put our confidence 
in the atmosphere, is but the evidence 
of barbarism ; to cherish the acquaint- 
ance of an abstract being, to ask the aid 
of an impersonal God, is but a Platon- 
ism at the close of the nineteenth cent- 
ury; and to rest our destiny in the 
lap of eventful and atmospheric cir- 
cumstances is but a wearied mysticism. 
We care not what pantheists and mys- 
tics and transcendentalists may pretend 



128 VOX SPEI 

to the contrary, and whatever a theol- 
ogy tinctured by those human notions 
may daily teach, if we adore a God it 
must be the God spoken of in the 
Analogy. Yes, man is so constituted 
that he cannot place his entire confi- 
dence ina <( First Cause ' ' of the phi- 
losopher, a " Divine Essence" of the 
school-men, or in the far off " Abstrac- 
tion " of the mystic; the mind and the 
heart of man, the logic and the affec- 
tion of the world, sweep aside these 
superficial distinctions ; the mind and 
the affection of the world throw them- 
selves around the personality of God, 
— about the God, the outlines of whose 
individuality we see in the Analogy. 
Yes, the Analogy is a book for to-day, 
and it is a book that ought to have a 
place in every home, and whose 
thought ought to have a place in the 
mind of all alike. Read The Analogy 
of Religion, it is one of the greatest 
books in the reading world to-day. 
2. The second truth which the 



VOX SPEI 113 

lieved. The French rolled like moun- 
tains in every direction; the company 
sent to the Duke of Wellington for 
assistance, and he told them to " stand 
firm, ,, and they had the assurance of 
his help behind them. In a battle of 
wider dimensions, the command comes 
to us, " Stand fast, immovable/ ' and 
we have the assurance of the great 
Captain behind us in the conflict, and 
with Christ in the conflict there is 
victory every time ; with Christ in the 
conflict we defy all our enemies, even 
the enemy of death. 

3. The third thought contained in 
this remarkable book is that this march 
leads to a " Celestial City." At last 
the man on his march arrives at the 
gate to the celestial city. The angels 
who conducted him to the gate tell 
the keeper that he came out of great 
tribulation for the love he had to the 
King ; the pilgrim presents his certifi- 
cate, the certificate is presented to the 
King, the King orders the door to be 



• 



ii4 VOX SPEI 

opened, and as lie enters one says to 
him : ' i Come ye blessed of my Father, 
inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world: 
enter you into the joy of your Lord." 
The thought that is struggling for a 
solution, the questions that are put for 
an intelligent reply, are these: " Is 
heaven a reality ?" " Where is its lo- 
cation ?" "What is the character of 
its occupants, and what is its occupa- 
tion ?" Yes, there is a celestial city, 
there is a heaven. The language of 
Christ is clear on this important sub- 
ject : "In my Father's house are many 
mansions/ ' " I go to prepare a place 
for you." " And these shall go away 
into everlasting punishment; but the 
righteous into life eternal." The con- 
science of the human race claims the 
truth of this great truth. If there is 
no heaven, then human life is a colos- 
sal enigma, and the Christian religion 
is a huge mistake ; if there is no heav- 
en then the martyrs have suffered in 



VOX SPEI 115 

vain, and the good have received no 
reward for their heroic deeds. I do 
not know where heaven is, I cannot 
tell what is the occupation there ; but 
I do know that Christ is alive, that He 
is with the Father, and that heaven is 
where the Father and the Son dwell 
for evermore. " Let not your heart 
be troubled. In my Father's house 
are many mansions. Because I live 
ye shall live also." These are the 
words of Him who was dead and is 
alive for evermore. Heaven is open 
for us all, shall we enter in? 




1 



" Prove what is that good, and acceptable, 
and perfect will of God. Prove all things ; hold 
fast that which is good." — Pane. 



Literature that Lasts 

THE ANALOGY OF RELIGION 

— Dr. Joseph Butler 

This is one of the important books of 
English literature, and in a certain 
department it is the most important 
book in the thought and theology of 
the Christian Church. The author, 
Joseph Butler, was born at Wantage, 
in Berkshire, England, on the 18th of 
May, 1692. Thus his life was born 
into circumstances which surrounded 
such praiseworthy and powerful schol- 
ars as Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Hare, 
and Dr. Doddridge; Joseph Addison, 
Matthew Tyndal, Lord Bolingbroke, 
and many more equally prominent. 
In early life the thoughts of young 
Butler were turned to philosophy and 
theology, and while still quite young, 
he entered into a controversy with Dr. 
Samuel Clarke, in which the English 



120 VOX SPEI 

people were permitted to see the 
greatness of a mind that was to be 
devoted to the interests of Christianity. 
And if Savonarola was a God-raised 
man, brought to the stage of action 
that Italy might be cleaned of its indi- 
vidual and national corruption; if 
Luther was a God-raised man, intended 
by the Creator to be a leader in the 
overthrow of formality and oppression 
and lifelessness found in the Romish 
Church ; then Joseph Butler was a man 
raised of God to go into battle against 
the skepticism which had its advocates 
in such writers as Lord Herbert and 
David Hume ; Joseph Butler was raised 
of God to go into battle against, and 
completely overthrow, the subtle deism 
of Matthew Tyndal and Lord Boling- 
broke. 

The Analogy of Religion was published 
in 1736, and is one of the great pro- 
ductions of English theology, while 
the book itself is one of the master- 
pieces of English literature. Dr. 



VOX SPEI 121 

Joseph Butler devoted seven of the 
ripest years of his mental and spiritual 
life in the preparation of this book, 
and these have been the seven years of 
labor that have told more profoundly 
on the thought and life of Christianity 
than any other seven years of any 
other writer in the history of letters 
and religion. This is certainly the 
sentiment of the greatest writers, while 
this is the place given to this book by 
the scholarship of the world since its 
production. Sir James Mackintosh, 
in his Progress of Ethical Philosophy ', 
writes after this manner, speaking of 
the Analogy, " The most original and 
profound work extant in any language 
on the philosophy of religion." Lord 
Brougham, in a discourse on Natural 
Theology, says, speaking again of the 
Analogy, " The most argumentative 
and philosophical defense of Chris- 
tianity ever submitted to the world." 
While Thomas Chalmers, in his preface 
to the Bridgewater Treatise, makes this 



122 VOX SPEI 

remarkable acknowledgment, " I have 
derived greater aid from the views 
and reasonings of Bishop Butler than 
I have been able to find besides in the 
whole of our extant authorship. ' ' And 
this is the second book, whose worth 
and wisdom have been tested by the 
greatest minds, that has been produced 
during the last one hundred and fifty 
years; this is the book that has had 
the highest place given it in the philoso- 
phy of the Christian religion ; this is 
the second book which I recommend 
to your attention, and for which I ear- 
nestly ask your immediate and best 
thought: read The Analogy of Religion, 
by Dr. Joseph Butler! 

Though this book was written more 
than one hundred and fifty years ago, 
yet the circumstances of to-day are 
very similar to those of the time of 
Butler, and the book, therefore, bears 
a message to the people living at the 
close of the nineteenth century. When 
the Analogy appeared, there was 



VOX SPEI 123 

scarcely any vital Christian life in the 
Established Church of England, and 
Dr. Doddridge is the authority for the 
statement that the Dissenters, or the 
Protestants, were in a state of spiritual 
decay. Amid the lifelessness that 
seemed to prevail among all sections 
of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
it had come ' ' to be taken for granted, ' ' 
says Butler, "by many persons, that 
Christianity is not so much a subject 
of inquiry ; but that it is now at length 
discovered to be fictitious. And ac- 
cordingly, they treat it as if, in the 
present age, this were an agreed point 
among all the people of discernment ; 
and nothing remained but to set it 
up as a principal subject of mirth and 
ridicule." And, referring to the cir- 
cumstances of that time, another able 
and trusted writer says, " I have lived 
to see that fatal crisis when religion 
hath lost its hold on the minds of the 
people/ ' While Macaulay refers to 
the period in which Butler wrote his 



i2 4 VOX SPEI 

famous book as irreverent, loose in 
morals, and very lax in other respects. 
These circumstances were aggravated 
by such writers as Woolston, Tyndal, 
and Collins, who were three bitter 
opponents to vital Christianity. Wool- 
ston directed his force against the 
miracles of the Scriptures; Tyndal 
pointed his sword against the validity, 
or divine sanction of the Bible ; while 
Collins gave his attention in trying to 
prove that prophecy was nothing else 
but a huge pretension. Such were 
the conditions that surrounded Butler, 
and such are the conditions at the 
close of the nineteenth century. There 
are men and women in this day who 
are led captive by a skepticism that 
played havoc in England during the 
last century ; there are some who hold 
up the religion of the Christ as a subject 
for mirth and ridicule ; there are those 
who say that miracles are only move- 
ments in natural law, and that the 
Bible has no other claim upon the mind 



VOX SPEI 125 

of mankind than that which any good 
book has, and that there is no such 
thing as prophecy, as there is no God, 
and no man can foretell the future to 
his brothers. The Analogy is the book 
that saved the English people of the 
last century from the mental and spir- 
itual death to which they were hasten- 
ing, and this is the book that deserves 
and demands our attention to-day, 
for, what it did a hundred and fifty 
years ago, it will do even now ! 

The book we have under considera- 
tion is avowedly important in the pro- 
found thought that it presents, — it is 
a book that has claimed the attention 
of the greatest intellects during the 
last one hundred and fifty years. It 
will be absolutely impossible for me, 
in this single attempt, to bring before 
you the wealth of the thought which 
this great work contains. But permit 
me to point out some of the truths 
that this book seeks to establish. 

1 . The first truth which the A nalogy 



126 VOX SPEI 

makes clear is the Personality of God. 
This was the truth that needed a loud 
and loyal advocate in the eighteenth 
century, and it needs just such an ad- 
vocate to-day. Butler establishes, in 
a most masterly way, the personality 
of God, both from the standpoint of 
natural and revealed religion ; he calls 
nature to his assistance, and makes 
her speak eloquently in the interest of 
his teaching, in the establishment of 
his thought. To use the words of the 
Analogy: "As the manifold appear- 
ances of design and final causes, in the 
constitution of the world, prove it to 
be the work of an intelligent Mind, so 
the particular final causes of pleasure 
and pain, distributed among his creat- 
ures, prove that they are under his 
government/ ' Butler, in the Analogy y 
does not point us to the mere prin- 
ciple of gravitation, he does not ask us 
to bestow our affection on a fixed star, 
he does not entreat us to lay up treas- 
ures in the clouds, he does not com- 



VOX SPEI 127 

mand us to look away into the mist of 
infinite space, and as a man in the dark 
grope that he might touch something 
or some one; Butler, in the Analogy, 
makes absolutely clear the individu- 
ality, the personality of the Creator 
of the universe. 

This position, so firmly established 
by Butler, has often been proved with 
accumulated evidence, from the argu- 
ment of analogy and final causes, from 
abstract reasonings, from the most an- 
cient tradition and testimony, and from 
the general consent of mankind. To 
love mere space, to put our confidence 
in the atmosphere, is but the evidence 
of barbarism ; to cherish the acquaint- 
ance of an abstract being, to ask the aid 
of an impersonal God, is but a Platon- 
ism at the close of the nineteenth cent- 
ury; and to rest our destiny in the 
lap of eventful and atmospheric cir- 
cumstances is but a wearied mysticism. 
We care not what pantheists and mys- 
tics and transcendentalists may pretend 



128 VOX SPEI 

to the contrary, and whatever a theol- 
ogy tinctured by those human notions 
may daily teach, if we adore a God it 
must be the God spoken of in the 
Analogy, Yes, man is so constituted 
that he cannot place his entire confi- 
dence ina u First Cause ' ' of the phi- 
losopher, a " Divine Essence" of the 
school-men, or in the far off "Abstrac- 
tion " of the mystic; the mind and the 
heart of man, the logic and the affec- 
tion of the world, sweep aside these 
superficial distinctions ; the mind and 
the affection of the world throw them- 
selves around the personality of God, 
— about the God, the outlines of whose 
individuality we see in the Analogy. 
Yes, the Analogy is a book for to-day, 
and it is a book that ought to have a 
place in every home, and whose 
thought ought to have a place in the 
mind of all alike. Read The Analogy 
of Religion, it is one of the greatest 
books in the reading world to-day. 
2. The second truth which the 



VOX SPEI 145 

expression, shall appear? It was Sir 
Thomas Browne who was fond of say- 
ing : ■ ■ Life is a pure flame, and we 
live by an invisible sun within us. ' ' 
And the life of John Keble was but 
the reflection of a greater life within 
him, — " I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me." 

" Then spake the king: t Your sentence is not 
mine. 
Life is the gift of God, and is divine. ' " 

The Christian Year is certainly a two- 
fold legacy to the Christian Church; 
it is a compendium of devotional litera- 
ture, and it is a brief summary of 
evangelical theology. Such a devo- 
tional spirit as is manifest in The Chris- 
tian Year is not a mere acquirement, it 
is a sublime gift. The devotion of 
which John Keble was an example, 
and which rendered his poetical work 
a great teacher, was not a mere 
dreamy, inactive meditation ; it was a 
devout spirit finding its highest joy in 



146 VOX SPEI 

doing good. Listen to what Keble 
says, in his Second Sunday in Advent : — 

" Think not of rest; though dreams be sweet, 
Start up, and ply your heavenward feet. 
Is not God's oath upon your head, 
Ne'er to slink back on slothful bed, 
Never again your loins untie, 
Nor let your torches waste and die, 
Till, when the shadows thickest fall, 
Ye hear your Master's midnight call.' 

And this devotional nature is the 
evidence of a pure love, a love that is 
solicitous of the world's greatest good, 
and is concerned about " joy " dwell- 
ing in the heart of man. In the 
Fourth Sunday in Lent we have these 
sweet lines: — 

" But there's a sweeter flower than e'er 

Blush 'd on the rosy spray — 
A brighter star, a richer bloom 
Than e'er did western heaven illume 

At close of summer day. 

" 'Tis Love, the last best gift of Heaven; 
Love gentle, holy, pure; 



VOX SPEI 147 

But tenderer than a dove's soft eye, 
The searching sun, the open sky, 
She never could endure.' ' 

This devotional spirit is further mani- 
fest in an absolute trust, an unfaltering 
belief in the verities of the soul* s re- 
lation to its Lord. In St. Thomas Day, 
Keble has these striking lines : — 

" Both wonder, one believes — but while 
They muse on all at home, 
No thought can tender Love beguile 

From Jesus' grave to roam. 
Weeping she stays till He appear — 
Her witness first the Church must hear — 
All joy to souls that can rejoice 
With her at earliest call of His dear gracious 
voice. ' 7 

Though this book of poems was writ- 
ten in the days of the so-called ' ' Ox- 
ford Tract Movement/' and by one 
who was numbered among the origi- 
nal four who started this movement, 
yet it is absolutely free from the re- 
ligious mist, the mental rationalism 
contained in so many of the Tracts 



148 VOX SPEI 

issued at that time ; The Christian Year 
is the exponent of the purest evan- 
gelical theology. This has its illustra- 
tion in Keble's reference to the Person 
of the Christ : — 

" But where Thou dwellest, Lord, 
No other thought should be. 
Once duly welcomed and adored, 
How should I part with Thee ? 
Bethlehem must lose Thee soon, but Thou wilt 

grace 
The single heart to be Thy sure abiding-place." 

Also Christ's relation to God, as pos- 
sessing power to save men from their 
sins : — 

" Thus in her lonely hour 

Thy Church is fain to cry, 
As if Thy love and power 

Were vanish' d from her sky; 
Yet God is there, and at His side 

He triumphs, who for sinners died." 

And further in Christ's ability to bring 
us eventually to heaven with Him- 
self: — 



VOX SPEI 149 

" Then on th' incarnate Saviour's breast, 
The fount of sweetness, they shall rest, 
Their spirits every hour imbued 
More deeply with His precious blood. 
But peace — still voice and closed eye 
Suit best with hearts beyond the sky, 
Hearts training in their low abode, 
Daily to lose themselves in hope to find their 
God." 

Butler taught that " probability is 
the guide of life," the danger of which 
teaching is to destroy the certainty 
possible to the true Christian believer. 
But The Christian Year is the opposite 
of such teaching, it gives the firmness 
of assent to every Biblical truth and 
Christian doctrine ; John Keble seems 
to say: " Faith makes us intellectu- 
ally certain, while love to the Lord 
Christ will settle every difficulty in 
the mental and moral sphere." Lis- 
ten to Keble* s own words on St. Mat- 
thew : — 

" But Love's flower that will not die 
For lack of leafy screen, 



i5o 



VOX SPEI 



And Christian hope can cheer the eye 
That ne'er saw vernal green; 

Then be ye sure that Love can bless 
Even in this crowded loneliness, 

Where ever-moving myriads seem to say, 
Go — thou art not to us, nor we to thee — 



away 



! " 




m i9 w* 



r 



